The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories

by Ben Marcus

  Though not quite a prodigy, Shapiro had been received with great enthusiasm at the youthful start of his career. He’d been shy and luminously pale, with dark curls and almost freakish technical abilities that delighted audiences. But the qualities he greatly admired and envied in other pianists—varieties of a profound musicianship which focused the attention on the ear, hearing, rather than on the hand, executing—were ones he lacked. He practiced, he struggled, he cultivated patience, and he was rewarded—minimally. By just the faintest flicker of heat in his crystalline touch.

  His curls, pallor, and technique lost some of their brilliance; his audience was distracted by newcomers and dispersed, and a sudden increase in the velocity of the earth’s spin dumped Shapiro into his thirty-eighth year. Aaron Shapiro. Caroline had been starry-eyed when they’d met, although by that time he’d already moved out to the margin of the city and was beginning to take on private students, startlingly untalented children who at best thought of the piano as a defective substitute for something electronic. Gradually he ceased to be the sort of pianist who might expect to make recordings, give important concerts, be interviewed, hold posts at conservatories. His name, once received like a slab of precious metal, was now received like a slip of blank paper.

  “Things will work out,” Caroline said, although “things,” in Shapiro’s estimation, were deteriorating. She touched him less often. Her smiles became increasingly lambent and forbearing. Sometimes she called in the afternoon to say she’d be held up at work. Her voice would be hesitant, apprehensive; her words floated in the air like dying petals while he listened, reluctant to hang up but unable to think of anything to say.

  Recently, he’d been silent for whole evenings, reading, or simply sitting. Rent, plus utilities, plus insurance, minus lessons, plus food—columns of figures went marching through his head, knocking everything else out of it. Once, after he’d had a day of particularly demoralizing students, Caroline perched on the arm of his chair. “Things will work out,” she said, and touched his cheek.

  She might just as well have socked him. “Things will work out?” he said. He was ready to weep with desire that this be true, yet it was manifestly not. “You mean—Ah. Perhaps what you mean is that things will work out for some other species. Or on some other planet. In which case, Caroline, you and I are in complete accord. After all, life moves on.”

  She was staring at him, her hand drawn back as though she’d inadvertently touched a hot stove. Was that his voice? Were those his words? He could hardly believe it himself. Those stiff words, like stiff little soldiers, stiff with shame at the atrocities they were committing.

  “Life moves on,” he continued, ruthless and miserable, “but not necessarily to the benefit of the individual, does it? Yes, things will work out eventually, I suppose. But do you think they’ll work out for the guy who sleeps in front of our building? Do you think—” The danger and excitement of probing his terror narrowed his vision into a throbbing circle, from which Caroline, imprisoned, stared back. “Do you think they’ll work out for me?”

  She’d retreated to the other room, and he sat with his head in his hands. Evidently, Caroline herself did not understand or accept the very thing she had just forced him to understand and accept—that he, like most humans, was an experiment that had never been expected to succeed, a little padding around some evolutionary thrust, a scattershot nubbin of DNA. It was a matter of huge biological importance, for some reason, that he be desperate to meet the demands of his life, but it was a matter of no biological importance whatever that he be able to meet them.

  But that week—that very week—an airmail letter arrived from a Richard Penwad inviting Shapiro to play Umberto García-Gutiérrez’s Second Piano Concerto at a Pan-American music festival.

  An amazing occurrence. Though one that, having occurred, was—like every other occurrence—plausible. The terrible feeling hanging over the apartment began to evaporate. Shapiro was embarrassed by his recent behavior and feelings, which now seemed absurdly theatrical, absurdly childish. Of course things would work out. Why wouldn’t things work out? Why shouldn’t he and Caroline go to whatever restaurant she pleased? And enjoy it. Order some decent wine, attend concerts, travel … Check in hand, he would lead Caroline into the bower of celebrity and international conviviality from which he’d been exiled. However gradually, in due course things would work out.

  In the days that followed, Shapiro felt by turns precariously elated and violently dejected, as though he were emerging from the chaos of an accident that had left him impaired in as yet undisclosed ways. He would catch Caroline gazing at him soberly with her great, light-filled eyes. She mentioned the invitation frequently. “Isn’t it terrific?” she said. “Aaron. How terrific.” Her voice was tender and lingering—remote, the voice in which, when they’d first met, she’d recounted to Shapiro tales of her idyllic childhood. Then, one evening, when he came home with a guidebook, she said, “Listen, Aaron.” And her voice had been especially gentle. “We have to talk.”

  * * *

  Shapiro checked the clock by his uncomfortable bed; it would be a relief to go downstairs and meet Penwad. His brain felt unbalanced by Caroline’s precipitous entrances and exits; anything to block them. He shut the door of his dark, cramped room behind him, and descended to the restaurant; yes, unbalanced! The corridors themselves seemed to buckle underfoot.

  The festival would have been an attractive proposition even at the best of times. Shapiro had played once before in Latin America—a concert in Mexico City many years earlier. The air in the hall had been velvety with receptivity, the audience ideal, and although his piece had been first on the program, they had demanded an encore from him right then and there.

  The García-Gutiérrez concerto had furnished other happy occasions in his career. He’d performed its United States premiere some seventeen years earlier. The piano part was splashy and difficult, perhaps not terribly substantial, but an excellent vehicle for Shapiro; it glittered in his hands. García-Gutiérrez had been there to congratulate him with a quiet intensity. What would he look like now, Shapiro wondered. At that time he’d been handsome—silvery hair, tall, hooded eyes. How young Shapiro must have seemed, with his abashed, eager gratitude!

  Penwad was already downstairs at the restaurant drinking a coffee. He extended, with official enthusiasm, a carefully manicured but stubby hand, and grimaced as Shapiro shook it. “We’re pleased we could get you down,” he said, and glanced at his palm. “This is our first go at the festival, I think I must have written you, but we’re hoping to bring people such as yourself annually, from all over the Americas—especially the States. We’re starting out with García-Gutiérrez as our star attraction, you see, because he’s a local boy.”

  On the walls were posters of palm-fringed lakes, frosted volcanoes, and Indians smiling regal, slightly haughty smiles. Interspersed with the posters were magnificent examples of Indian textiles.

  “Charming, isn’t it?” Penwad said. “Not a—an ostentatious place, but we felt you’d find it charming.”

  Charming, Shapiro thought. Well, probably the other hotels were even worse. He glanced at the walls again. Charming! It was well known, what was happening in this country to the descendants of its earliest inhabitants—massacres, internment, debt slavery, torture—and, naturally, the waiters who scurried around beneath the smiling posters, looking raddled and grief-stricken, were Indians, ceremonial costumes draping their skinny bodies.

  “People don’t tend to be aware how vigorous our sponsorship of the arts is,” Penwad was saying. “We’re hoping the festival will help to … rectify the, ah, perception that we’re identified with the military here.”

  Shapiro’s attention was wrenched from the waiters. “The perception that …”

  “Rectify that perception,” Penwad said.

  Fee, Shapiro reminded himself. Fee plus lessons, minus rent, minus utilities … Well, and besides, there would be the credit. In a program note, even th
e most dubious event acquired grandeur. And why not? Concerts and exhibitions from the beginning of time had been funded by villains in search of endorsement, apologists, a place in history, or simple self-esteem. “Incidentally,” Shapiro said, “who is ‘we’?”

  Penwad raised his eyebrows. “Who is we?” he said.

  “That is, when you say ‘we’—”

  “Ah,” Penwad said. “Well, I’m not including myself, actually. I’m just a liaison, really, between the Embassy and various local committees and groups concerned with the arts.”

  “I see,” Shapiro said, with no attempt at tact.

  “So,” Penwad said. “We’ll get you a bit of breakfast, then go on over to the Arts Center, take a little look around—Rehearsal all day, rather strenuous, I’m afraid. After that we’ve fixed up a little interview for you—I trust that’s all right—around dinnertime. Friday’s free until the concert. Joan and I will pick you up first thing in the morning to show you around.” He smiled. “Joan has her own ideas, but you must say what interests you. Then, after the concert, there’s to be a party, a reception for you, essentially, at the home of some friends of ours, very fine people here. Then plane, yes? Very next morning.” He already, Shapiro noticed, looked relieved. “Quite a whirlwind.”

  “Wonderful,” Shapiro said. “But no need, you know, to take me over to the … Arts Center. Why don’t I just grab a taxi?”

  Penwad waved his hand. “I’m afraid the Center is difficult to find. Most of the drivers are unfamiliar with it. Besides,” he added, “enjoy your company.” He narrowed his eyes at his coffee cup, and raised it to his mouth.

  There was something anatomical about the Center’s great concrete sweeps and protuberances. Like all Arts Centers and Performing Arts Complexes and National Centers for the Performing Arts, though futuristic in design, it had a look of ancient decay, being left over from a period when leisure time and economic abundance were considered an imminent menace. How quaint a notion that now seemed! Shapiro almost laughed to think there had been a period, the period in which he’d grown up, no less, when it had been feared that wealth would soon cause humanity to devolve into a grunting mass sprawled in front of blood-drenched TV screens. But, no—Art (whatever that was), encouraged to flourish in its Centers, would prevent people from becoming intractable, illiterate, fat! And all the while poverty was accomplishing the devolution by itself.

  “I see you’re enjoying the, ah, prospect,” Penwad said.

  Shapiro became aware that he was staring down over toothy crenellations into a city cleaved by deep ravines and encircled by mountains.

  “Those tall buildings are the downtown area, of course,” Penwad said. “And to the right and left, obviously, are residential sectors.Our place is over there—that’s pretty much where the whole English-speaking community has … put down its little roots. And up there on the slopes is what we call the Gold Zone.”

  Shapiro, shading his eyes, noticed that the ravines below were encrusted with fuming slums. “My God,” he said.

  “Incredible, isn’t it,” Penwad said, “what an earthquake can do? You can really see the damage from up here. You probably noticed the floor of your hotel. The Center survived intact, though. We’re very proud of the Center. The architect was truly successful, we feel, the way he … Yes, actually. You might be interested. A fellow named Santiago Méndez. He’s done most of the better hotels in town, and our museum. There was a lecture last year. One of our events. It was explained. The way Méndez—Well, this was some time ago, of course—Joan would be better able to … But … the … combined influences.” He gestured toward several concrete mounds. “The modernistic, the indigenous … well, motifs. A cross-fertilization, as Joan says.”

  Shapiro hesitated. A bunting-like stupefaction had enveloped him. “Of … what?” he asked.

  “Of …? What of what?” Penwad asked.

  “Of …” Shapiro had lost the thread of his own question. “Of what … does Joan … say ‘cross-fertilization’?”

  “Joan says it …” Penwad glared at him. “She says it of … motifs.”

  The orchestra was from a small, nearby dictatorship, and the musicians had a startled appearance, as though a huge claw had snatched them from their beds and plonked them into their chairs. The conductor, a delicate and intelligent-looking man, welcomed Shapiro with reassuring collegiality, but when he brought down his baton Shapiro almost cried out; the sound was so peculiar that he feared he was suffering from some neurological damage.

  How had the conductor come to find himself in his profession, Shapiro wondered. The man’s waving arms seemed to be signaling for help rather than leading an orchestra. The poor musicians clutched their instruments, staring wildly at their sheet music as they played. But then it was Shapiro’s entrance; notes began to leap froggily from his own fingers, and he understood: clearly the hall was demonic.

  How to outwit these acoustics? As if this concerto were not difficult enough under the best of circumstances, with all its flash and bombast! But, of course, there was always something. Even in the loftiest, the most competently administered concerts, catastrophes invented themselves from the far reaches of possibility. The piano bench would fall into splinters at seven forty-five, or the other musicians turned out to have a new version of the score, three measures shorter than one’s own, or there was a bank holiday and it was impossible to retrieve one’s tuxedo from the cleaner’s—catastrophes far beneath the considerations of music, and yet!

  How synthetic the concerto sounded in this inhospitable hall! Shapiro was surprised to find himself disliking it so. He had never tremendously admired it, exactly, but he’d always enjoyed playing it: he’d enjoyed the athletic challenge of its surface complexities; he’d enjoyed the response of the audience. It was affirming, people said upon hearing it, and their faces had the shining, decisive expressions of people who feel their worth to be recognized. Affirming, Shapiro thought, as sound sloshed and bulged, gummed up in clumps, liquefied, as though the air were full of whirling blades.

  The interview that had been arranged for Shapiro was with an English journalist named Beale. An interview: implied interest on the part of someone. There would be clippings, at least, and, perhaps, therefore some shadowy retention of his name in the minds of those people—“we”—who put these festivals together.

  Shapiro located Beale in a restaurant of the hotel, much larger than his own, where they’d been scheduled to meet. “Are you tired of it?” Beale inquired anxiously. “I was hoping not. In my opinion it’s the best food in town, and the station will reimburse if it’s an interview.”

  Beale’s head was an interesting spaceship shape. Colorless and sensitive-looking filaments sprouted from it, and his ears looked like receiving devices. Sensors, transmitters, Shapiro thought, noting Beale’s other large, responsive-looking features and his nervous, hesitant fingers. Beale’s suit was faintly mottled by traces of stains; his shirt, from the evidence of his wrists, was short-sleeved, and he wore, incredibly, a tie that appeared to be made of rope.

  “I’m not tired of it yet,” Shapiro said. “I’ve never been here.”

  Beale squinted distrustfully at Shapiro. “They didn’t put you here? They put a lot of guests here …”

  Shapiro glanced around. So this was where they’d put an important musician. It was ugly and grandiose, with slippery-looking walls—the very air seemed soaked with a venal, melting luxe. “Santiago Méndez?” he said.

  “Oh, you’re good,” Beale said with delight. “Seriously. If they bring you down again, insist. Nice, isn’t it? They all speak English, and the furniture doesn’t just”—he lunged toward Shapiro in illustration—“loom up at you. Now, will you drink something?”

  Shapiro saw that two glasses already sat in front of Beale, one emptied and the other containing hardly more than a gold film. “Just water, thanks,” Shapiro said.

  “Oh, you can, here,” Beale said. “Rest assured. Ice and all. I, on the other hand,” he
informed a waiter, “will have a whiskey, why not.”

  “And perhaps we could order,” Shapiro added. Well, at least someone had seen fit to arrange a party for him.

  Beale studied the menu worriedly, running his finger along the print. He had quantities of advice for Shapiro about it but seemed unable to make up his own mind. “A nice chop, perhaps,” Beale said. “You know, this is the one place where it’s perfectly safe to eat pork. That is, if you—” His eyes blinked and reset themselves furiously, like lights on an overtaxed instrument panel.

  While Beale entrusted his order to the waiter, Shapiro’s attention wandered to posters on the wall. Plenty of charm here, too: more lakes, more volcanoes, more smiling Indians … Beale dove abruptly beneath the table, resurfacing with a tape recorder as primitive-looking as a trilobite. “I hope you don’t mind if I … There are several publications that are reasonably, well … friendly to me, but mostly I do radio.”

  “Radio,” Shapiro agreed politely. “And this would be for … the English-speaking community, I presume.”

  Beale looked at him blankly. “Not really. There are telephones for that sort of thing. Oh! No.” His voice became gluey with attempted modesty. “No, this is a show back home in England, you see. They often ask me for a little story.”

  England. So, this was a bit more promising. “A show … about the arts,” Shapiro suggested.

  “The arts?” Beale said. “Well, there’s not really too much scope for that sort of thing here. This country isn’t just churning out the artists, you know. Not a very … well, ‘favorable climate’ I suppose is the expression. Actually, it’s a show about just whatever happens to come up. I was glad when your Embassy called and put me on to this one, because there’s not really a fantastic amount. You can file only just so often about dead students before people get sick of it. Still, don’t think I’m complaining—I’m lucky to be here at all. When I was young, I was simply frantic to get to this part of the world. Astonishing place. Have you had much chance to get around? See the sights, meet the people?”