The Countertenor Wore Garlic (The Liturgical Mysteries)

by Mark Schweizer

  ***

  Meg caught up with me after her meeting and the two of us weren't long in joining the kids at the Plague Faire. Brother Hog was enrapturing the children with a demonstration of the Plagues of Egypt while D'Artagnan Fabergé was busy applying make-believe boils and flies to the faces of the children with some kind of theatrical cement. In addition, there were plenty of plastic frogs and grasshoppers to go around, and cups of red Kool-Aid over hail-shaped ice cubes. With D'Artagnan's trademark mullet a good bet to be housing head-lice, Hog didn't have all the plagues covered, but with seven out of ten, he was doing pretty well.

  "Eew," said Meg, giving an involuntary shudder as Moosey sauntered up sporting a couple of inflamed abscesses with several large bluebottles sipping at the edges. He was dressed as a ragtag pirate, but now he was some sort of bubonically infected castaway that would be expiring within the next hour or two. However, as disturbing as Moosey's transformation was, it was nothing compared to the sight of Bernadette. One never expects to see a ten-year-old Barbie princess with flies crawling out of the wounds on her face. In addition, she had a bulging, dripping, droopy, rubber eyeball that she'd winked into place.

  "I think I'm going to be sick," said Meg.

  "Cool!" said Bernadette, obviously happy with the effect.

  "Bernadette got all the fly-boils," said Moosey disgustedly. "She found them in the bottom of the jar. I wanted one but they were gone so I got D'Artagnan to glue a couple of regular flies around the edges." He pointed to one of his disgusting add-ons.

  "There were only two of them fly-boils," argued Bernadette, "and I needed them to complete my look."

  "It's a look," I agreed.

  "I already had the eyeball," she said excitedly, popping it out and holding it up for us to inspect. "I got it from a costume shop in Asheville last summer. I've been saving it." She turned to Moosey. "Besides," she said, "you got the big flies. You and Dewey. All that are left are the little black ones."

  Moosey grinned. "Yeah. Pretty sweet."

  "Don't show your mother," said Meg to Bernadette. "She will not be able to take it."

  "Excellent!" said Bernadette, rubbing her hands together with unrestrained glee. She put the rubber eyeball back over her real one and squinched it in. "Excellent!"

  Dewey and Stuart ran up looking like an advertisement for a circa 1665 London getaway weekend, and not the good kind.

  "Yuck," said Meg.

  "Brother Hog says this is what happened when the people didn't do what God told them," said Stuart. "Also, their dogs died."

  "He says we're okay," added Dewey. "We're under some kind of new condiment."

  "Covenant," I said. "New Covenant."

  "Yeah," said Dewey. "That's it. You want a boil? I can get you one!"

  "No, thanks," I said.

  ***

  I was enjoying the afternoon and saw Bud McCollough walking across the park in front of the puppet show. "Hey, Bud!" I called. "Hang on a second."

  Bud stopped, smiled, and with a wave, headed in my direction.

  "Home for fall break?" I asked as he approached.

  "Yep. I'm having a good semester, too."

  "Might you be attending the silent movie this afternoon?" I asked.

  "Oh, yes. I wouldn't miss it. Nosferatu was voted one of the top 100 movies of all time."

  "Would you mind being my projectionist?"

  Bud looked nervous. "I guess. What would I have to do?"

  I laughed. "You'd have to push the 'play' button on the DVD player."

  He relaxed and laughed with me. "Sure. I can do that."

  "Meg said she'd do it," I said, "but I'd prefer someone with a little more technical savvy. Don't tell her I said that."

  "Yeah, okay. Five o'clock?"

  "Come a little early and I'll show you the setup. By the way, can you give me a suggestion for a nice rosé that'll go with a pork loin?"

  Bud made a face. "Really, Chief! You don't want a rosé. I mean, it's great for rinsing peanut butter off the roof of your mouth..."

  I grinned. Bud was getting to be a real snob. A year ago, he would have given me a list of six rosés and the reasons why I should try them, but this is youth. I went through the same thing with music, refusing to listen to Tchaikovsky during my graduate school years chiefly due to his blatant appeal to the uninformed masses.

  "If you really like a rosé with pork, let's be a bit daring and try a fruity grenache and shiraz mix instead," he said. "I'd even suggest you go with one of the Australians: a 2003 d'Arenberg d'Arry's Original. It's tart and edgy and a little bit sassy with a bouquet of cooked berries and eucalyptus. You'll taste the tangy raspberries on the tongue and strawberries popping on the finish." Bud got that faraway look in his eyes. "It's reminiscent of alpine meadows inhabited by of-age nymphs." He smacked his lips softly as if tasting it for the first time, then said, "It's about twenty bucks a bottle, but I think you'll find it's worth the price."

  "Hang on," I said, scrambling in the pockets of my coat for something to write on. "I do like of-age nymphs."

  "You know," he continued, "in Rabelais' 16th century treatise, Traité théorique et Pratique sur le grandir et moissonner de la vigne, he advocates adding sugar to the grenache grapes to increase the final alcoholic content of the wine. This is almost three centuries before Chaptal made the process acceptable. No one has even done any work on Rabelais' writings. He's totally unknown! It's amazing really!"

  "Huh," I grunted, still scribbling. "If he's totally unknown, how did you find out about him?"

  "Well," Bud said, "I happened to meet someone who actually had their hands on the manuscript in the archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale. Let's just say that I'm getting a lot of interesting and unpublished information. This is going to do wonders for our shop when we open it. It'll put us on the international map."

  "Excellent," I said. "Keep up the good work. I'll see you a little before five."

  ***

  At five o'clock the church was full and I was ready to begin the performance. The screen was set up in the front of the church and I had a monitor sitting on the organ console. The projector was in place and my projectionist, Bud McCollough, had his finger poised on the "play" button of the DVD machine.

  Improvising to a silent film isn't easy, and I certainly wasn't as good as the old theater organists who'd play on the fly without ever having seen the film. I was prepared, though, having watched the film several times, made copious notes, practiced, and jotted down quite a bit of material to draw from. Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror is a classic, a vampire celluloid that was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula with names and details changed because the studio could not obtain the rights to the novel.

  Marilyn, true to her word, had prepared some program notes and I'd had a chance to peruse them earlier.

  "Nosferatu" comes from the Greek word nosophoros (which means "plague-carrier") that evolved into the Old Slavonic word "nosufur-atu". The name was first associated with vampirism in an article written by Emily Gerard titled "Transylvanian Superstitions" which was published in July, 1885. The article was read by Bram Stoker, and the name became popular in fictional literature as the result of Stoker using the name in his novel Dracula.

  She went on to tell a little about the history of the movie including the fact that Aaron Copeland's 1922 ballet, Grohg (unpublished and not premiered until 1992), used Nosferatu as the physical model for the lead character and follows the story line pretty closely.

  The audience, and in fact the whole town, was in a batty mood chiefly due to the nearly two hundred teen-aged girls wandering the park in vampire garb waiting for Salena Mercer to show up for her book signing at Eden Books. Salena Mercer had been on the best-selling list for six years straight. Her Nimbus series had sold millions and, since the movies had hit the big screens, her appearances were rare. That she was coming to Eden Books was thanks to Georgia Wester's daughter, an anesthesiologist in New York City, who had apparently rendered so
me great service to Salena Mercer's publicity agent.

  According to the information that the agent provided to Nancy (as our deputized policewoman on duty) the author's flight from NYC would land in Greensboro sometime in the afternoon. The limo would then bring her to St. Germaine, stopping first for a quick, anonymous bite in Old Salem. She wasn't due at the bookstore until 6:30, but the crowd was already growing. She was on a strict schedule: Eden Books from 6:30 'til 9:00, then a seventy-mile car ride to Asheville where she'd start signing at midnight.

  The lights in the nave went out, Bud pushed the button starting the DVD player, and I began the performance. There was a reason I'd been listening to Halloween music for the last two weeks. Now snippets of Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre intertwined with the "March to the Scaffold" from the Symphonie Fantastique, Night on Bald Mountain, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a bit of Wagner, and a little section from Bach's Toccata in D minor. I even managed to work in part of Ghosts' High Noon, a Gilbert and Sullivan classic. There was a lot of filler as well. Ninety-four minutes is a long time to improvise, but it seemed to go quickly, and before I knew it, the film was reaching its climactic scene.

  Not many people know this, but until Nosferatu, vampires weren't adversely affected by sunlight. Like many creatures of the night, they didn't particularly care for it, but it certainly didn't do them any harm. In the original novel, Count Dracula wanders around the streets of London anytime he wants. In this version though, Count Orlok must sleep by day, as sunlight would kill him. I, of course, would greet the sunrise like any good classical musician with Morning Mood—music from the Peer Gynt Suite.

  Count Orlok stares longingly from his window at the sleeping Ellen, but she's read The Book of Vampires and has learned his weakness. A vampire can be destroyed in only one way: a woman, pure of heart, must willingly give her blood to him, so that he loses track of time until the cock's first crowing. She opens the window to invite Orlok in, but faints. I opened the swell box and the key of e-flat minor pervaded.

  I heard someone coming up the stairs to the choir loft and a moment later Nancy appeared in my periphery. She motioned to me to follow her back down. I shook my head and kept my eyes glued to the monitor. The film was almost finished.

  When Ellen's husband is sent to fetch the doctor, Count Orlok enters the room. G minor, another dark key. He bends low and is so engrossed in drinking the heroine's blood, he forgets about the coming day. A rooster crows—courtesy of a Nasard stop combination and a cock-a-doodle-do motif that I'd found on page 16 of Theater Organists' Secrets—and our vampire disappears in a puff of smoke as Edward Grieg's familiar morning melody finally fills the air. I threw on the nachtigal just for good measure, and the sound of birdsong echoed through the church. The nachtigal was one of the toy stops that Baroque organs used to have in abundance. This one was comprised of two small organ pipes, mounted upside down and blowing into a water-filled pot. Ellen (obviously appreciative of the chirps echoing throughout the church) lives long enough to be embraced by her grief-stricken husband, and by the time the image of Orlok's ruined castle in the Carpathian Mountains graced the screen, I was playing In the Hall of the Mountain King for the final credits.

  The final chords garnered rousing applause, but Nancy was already leaning over the organ console.

  "You've got to get out of here and see what's going on in the park. Quick!"

  Chapter 7

  When we walked out of the church, the sun had already dropped behind the mountain ridges. Sunset, according to the weather service, was at 6:27 PM, but that doesn't take into account the peaks that surrounded St. Germaine. The sun disappears a good thirty minutes before actual sunset. We'd lose an hour when we went off Daylight Saving Time—something that would happen at 2 AM Sunday morning—and the town would start to darken at five o'clock. So at 6:30, dusk had long passed and it was almost dark. The streetlights around the square were on, of course, and although the carnival was over and the booths were closed, most of the shops were still lit, happy to offer the trick-or-treaters a handout as they came dashing by in their attempt to get to as many stores as they could before forging ahead into the nearby neighborhoods. But, it wasn't the slew of kids around the edge of the park who were commanding my attention.

  At the south end of the park, in front of Eden Books, was a long black limousine surrounded by scores of vampires, or rather hundreds of teenaged girls adorned in what might be termed "Vampire Gothic." Blood-vial jewelry, white makeup, fangs, black outfits, and tattoos (both real and press-on) were the order of the evening. The bookstore was full since the ones inside didn't want to leave, and the overflow was starting to chatter angrily out on the sidewalk.

  At the north end of the park, between the Slab Café and St. Barnabas Church, were hundreds of zombies, all walking around stiff-legged with their arms stuck out like Frankenstein's monster. They were dressed in rags, old torn clothes, hats—whatever they could find—and made up with hideous gashes, scars, and bleeding wounds of every description. Some had rubber zombie masks and gloves, but most of the costumes were handmade and scarier for it. From what we could tell, they weren't talking at all. Just grunting and slathering.

  I looked at Nancy, a puzzled expression on my face.

  "I caught Jeremy Calloway, of the New Fellowship Baptist kids, and asked him what was going on," she said. "You know what a flashmob is?"

  I shook my head.

  Nancy sniffed in consternation. "You should really keep up, Hayden. It's a large group of people that form for some pointless activity for a brief period and then disperse."

  "Is that what this is?" I asked.

  "Sort of," replied Nancy. "This is a zombie-walk. It's like a flashmob except everyone dresses up like zombies."

  "This is normal activity?" I asked. "People do this?"

  "Not old people like you," said Nancy. "Young people."

  "Should we be worried?"

  Nancy hesitated, narrowed her eyes, and gauged the situation. "I don't know yet," she said. "Maybe."

  "Well, it's particularly appropriate for Halloween, I suppose," I said, waving to Pete Moss who'd come out of the Slab Café to see what was going on.

  "Yep," she agreed. "It seems that one of the New Fellowship kids—you know, 'The Zombies of Easter'—put it on Facebook. It went viral and didn't take long for every kid in Watauga County to put on their zombie-wear and head for St. Germaine."

  "How many?" I asked.

  "Probably three hundred by now and more every minute. I checked the Facebook announcement. The zombie-walk was scheduled for 6:30, but they started showing up about fifteen minutes ago."

  "I don't suppose that Brother Denny or Danny or whatever his name is, is taking responsibility."

  "Nope. I called him. He doesn't have any salvation tracts left and he's decided to go home and not answer the door. He handed the tracts out to the NFB kids. They were supposed to go door to door behind the trick-or-treaters, give them to whoever answered, and invite them to church."

  "Is anyone in charge of these zombies?"

  "That's the thing about a flashmob or a zombie-walk," said Nancy. "There is no one in charge. It's performance art. They're sort of like birds, you know? Flocking behavior. They move together, but no one is leading them."

  As if in response to Nancy's explanation, the mob suddenly stopped milling aimlessly and began to shamble slowly and methodically in rhythm. The vampires glared at them.

  Dr. Ian Burch, PhD, appeared beside us, having just exited the church. "I enjoyed your playing," he said, "but I wish you would have included more quartal progressions utilizing the lowered 4th and 7th tones in the tertiary modal harmonizations. It might have given a more authentic Romanian feel to the 'motif of longing' that you kept reiterating whenever the heroine appeared on the screen."

  "Ian," I said, "I don't even know what that means."

  "Have you seen Flori Cabbage?" he asked, surveying the park. "She texted me during the movie that she had something important to tell me.
I texted her back to meet me here after the movie."

  "Nope," I answered.

  "I think she wants tomorrow off. She's been taking quite a few days off lately. As her employer, I shall not be happy to grant her request."

  "Yeah," said Nancy, her eyes glued to the park and obviously not interested in Dr. Ian Burch's musings.

  "She might still be at the bookstore," Ian continued. "She enjoys those vampire stories." He shuddered. "She might not want to give up her position in the line."

  "My God," said Nancy, looking at Dr. Burch and wrinkling her nose. "What's that smell?"

  "That smell is garlic," said Ian without apology. He held up a string of garlic bulbs that he'd hung around his neck. "If you must know, I am quite superstitious and I have a particular thing about vampires. I do not like them. Not one bit."

  Nancy's eyes widened. "You... believe in them?" she asked, taking a step back.

  "I do," replied Ian. He pointed to the multitude of vampirey youths in front of Eden Books. "They're not all real, of course, but there are those that are, I assure you. I expect that, within that group, there are those that wouldn't mind a taste of virgin blood."

  "That's why you're wearing garlic?" said Nancy. "You're a virgin?"

  "Do not mock me," said Ian Burch, his nasally voice rising even higher than usual. He held some sort of wooden Renaissance instrument, cylindrical and about five inches in length, and gave it a startling honk.

  "Good Lord," said Pete as he walked up. He stuck a finger in one ear and pretended to clean it out. "What the heck's going on?"

  "This is a racket," said Ian Burch, PhD.

  "It certainly is," said Nancy.

  Ian ignored her. "According to ancient legend, vampires cannot abide its sound."

  "Me, neither," said Nancy. "Does that make me a vampire?"

  Nancy's snide comments didn't seem to bother Ian and he was happy to hold his prize aloft and continue the music lesson. "I ordered this one last week. The common name is the racket, but it's also know as the wurstfaggot. The sausage-bassoon."