Harmony

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  People, too, were less familiar by the minute. Hickey, for instance, who was clearly avoiding me, slinking about with Songh, taking care of my notes but never catching my eye. Until later, when one of his passes across stage brought him close by. He whispered, “I’ll be there for you guys tonight, don’t worry,” and moved away immediately.

  I stared after him. Hickey was scared even to be seen talking to me. Now the premature end to his romance with Lucienne was explained. I wondered what he heard in the shop these days when there were no apprentices around. Avoiding the hostile territory of the crew room, I went to the greenroom for coffee. Cris was there keying up the monitor that carried the news services.

  “What’s up?”

  He made sure we were alone. “Want a look at Brigham’s press conference?” He tapped in the file request. The clip came up quickly, and there was the fat man, smiling and joking, toasting the press with his breakfast champagne. I felt nauseous just looking at him but watched it through anyway. Know your enemy, Sam would say.

  The clip ended. “Yuck,” I said. “Well, back to work.”

  “Gwinn, wait…”

  “Not now, huh?” How could I explain to him how little he mattered anymore?

  “Just don’t be mad at me. It’s a temporary thing, for both of us.”

  I turned away, and there was Sean in the doorway, eyes fixed on the monitor with an expression I could not quantify. Dismay, or just as easily, guilt. Disgust, or perhaps agreement. Whatever it was, its intensity frightened me. Scared of Sean? Oh no. Then his eyes slid toward me. Oh yes.

  “Excuse me,” I murmured by the door, feeling my throat tighten. His work clothes were filthy. He looked like he’d forgotten to shave that morning.

  “I’m so sorry,” he croaked, “about Jane.”

  I couldn’t help it. I glanced at him accusingly as I ducked past him through the door. He grabbed my arm.

  “Gwinn, what… ?”

  I jerked away. His face went slack with surprise as I bolted down the corridor.

  “Gwinn!” he yelled. But I kept running. All the way to the theatre. I could avoid him there as long as I stuck close to Micah.

  I dived back to work on a request from Moussa to make his hill a little more comfortable. A small price to pay to keep the music going, said Micah. Jilly assigned me one of the older crew, a rough-voiced fellow who sighed a lot to show how patient he was, taking orders from a mere apprentice. When I made him pull up two square meters of neatly laid surfacing to add padding underneath, he muttered crossly, “He’s just got some damn rock to sit on where he comes from, right?” Even then he wouldn’t let me help him. “If the job needs two, let Sean put another man on it.”

  But I wasn’t going to be able to face Sean again real soon.

  I sat and gave directions, whole paragraphs of inadequate description, when my hands could have showed him in seconds. I hated him. Maybe it was you, I thought. So much easier to imagine this man’s beefy, work-scabbed hands around Jane’s neck rather than Sean’s.

  The Eye drifted in one by one instead of swooping down all at once at noon with their customary flourish. First there was Te-Cucularit grilling a nodding, openmouthed Songh about the prop revisions. Then I noticed Sam talking with Cris in that touchy, aggressive way they related to each other. They headed for the shop together. Soon after, Moussa sauntered over to test his spot. He sniffed out the situation right off and stuck out a hand to my bluff crewman, thanking him for this fine work that was going to add so much to his performance. The man seemed more impressed by Moussa’s size than anything else but found himself kneeling side by side with this cheerful giant, detailing the mysteries of the surfacing material with a willingness he couldn’t quite explain.

  I wanted to kiss the top of Moussa’s curly head, but that might break the spell. I left him to work his gentle miracles.

  Mali was standing alone in front of the trap, watching the painters touch up the scrapes and scars left by Jilly’s repairs.

  “Did you hear about the audience this afternoon?” I murmured.

  He did not reply. He was gone somewhere inside his head. Something fierce and angry in the set of his back compelled me, instead of moving on and leaving him to his musings, to take his hand and lean against his arm. It was only when his fingers tightened around mine that I recalled standing like that with my father, on evenings when he came home from work silent with mysterious unease.

  “Stay with him, if it happens,” he said.

  “If what?… Mali, nothing’s going to—”

  “He’d never ask it.”

  “Mali…” I shook his arm gently. “You’re scaring me.”

  He looked down at me, as if from miles away. “Night terrors, child.”

  “All ready below, Mal,” said Sam from behind us.

  Mali nodded soberly, then grabbed Sam’s hand as he came alongside and folded it around mine, pressed between his own. He held us like that for a moment, then turned and walked away.

  Sam frowned after him. “What’s with him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We let our hands drop, awkward with Mali’s gesture and with each other. I searched the floor for places the painters should take care of. Sam studied me.

  “This has,” he said quietly, “become something I did not quite expect.” His even tone would not admit if he thought this good or bad. “What do you think they’d do if I made love to you right here in front of them?”

  “Cheer us on, I guess.” Laughter was the only way to keep from saying what I shouldn’t.

  “Get back to work.” He pushed me gently away.

  Downstage, Mali had invited Micah to step aside with him into the house. They strolled side by side up one long aisle and along the curved rear wall, heads bowed at matching angles, their hands clasped behind their backs like two professors debating an arcane point of logic.

  Peter wandered in from the shop as the last of the tracking units was being wheeled up a long ramp onto the deck. Sam immediately drew him into some jocular exchange I couldn’t hear. Nothing in Peter’s manner suggested he was aware of being subtly interrogated, but then, nothing in Sam’s manner suggested that he was extracting any useful information.

  * * *

  Howie returned at noon. “Liz, we’ll start with a curtain call and here’s how we’ll do it.” His elaborate staging not too subtly isolated Mali as the star of the evening.

  Mali said, “We always do company calls.”

  “In our blacks,” Omea added more gently. She meant the anonymous black robes they’d worn for their first entrance into Harmony. “Always. It’s our signature.”

  “Not too much fun for your audiences.” Howie always said staging the curtain call was his favorite part of being a director.

  Omea smiled. “You mean, not allowing them to play favorites?”

  “You could put it that way.”

  “That’s the way we see it,” said Ule.

  Howie sighed and slumped in his seat.

  Omea sat down next to him. “Dear Howie, we’ve had to work very hard to maintain our unified public voice. Audiences always want to divide and conquer. By making one performer a star, they take power over that life. They have made it and can unmake it whenever it pleases them.”

  The canny producer in Howie was locked in battle with the more empathetic director. “But it gives you equal power over them. They’ll offer themselves body and soul to a star they’ve created.”

  “For a time.”

  “A short one,” said Ule.

  Omea squeezed Howie’s arm. “We’d prefer long and fruitful lives in the theatre. There’s so much work to be done!”

  “All right. As long as it’s as spectacular as you can make it. We’ll have been serious with them all evening. You gotta give them a chance to love you.”

  “But of course,” she replied, and that was the end of it. Or so we thought.

  * * *

  The house was full by two o’clock.


  “Like being at a wake,” Micah remarked.

  In Chicago, I’d heard wakes described as a barbarous custom but Micah made them sound quite civilized, and indeed there was something soothing about the steady flow of condolences past the production table, cast members from Crossroads, musicians and backstage staff, apprentices we knew and many we didn’t, all offering sympathy as if Jane had been our relative. And it wasn’t just Jane. It was what she stood for. With one masterful stroke the Eye had turned a messy death into a noble symbol of apprentice resistance. I hoped they’d be able to do the same with their play.

  It was not your usual lively apprentice audience, with chatter and row-hopping until the lights went down. Too worried about the evening’s Town Meeting and whether it would decide our fate. I was glad for the Crossroads folk, even though they’d probably come just to check out all the nasty rumors they’d heard next door. No matter. They were a cheerful lot, and devoted enough to the art to be willing to spend their first afternoon off inside another theatre.

  Micah sent Songh and me to Moussa’s side of the house to check sight lines. He’d said nothing of his conversation with Mali, but as I was leaving, he remarked, “If anything happens, you’ll be by the pass door and can get backstage as quickly as possible.”

  So Mali had talked him into it. We exchanged a look and I nodded gravely, wondering what use he thought I could be. Poor Micah. Matters had gotten so out of his control that even a futile gesture seemed better than none at all. But just as well. As Liz was calling places, Reede Chamberlaine oozed in with his retinue and filled up all the empty seats around the production table. I’d have been asked to move anyway.

  From where we were sitting, the curved backdrop towered in profile to our left, shadows of moss and stone. When the lights went down, the audience settled immediately into the rapt waiting that thrills the heart of a theatre practitioner. Bird shapes flitted past, winging out into the house above our heads. Odors of jungle and sea tinged the stirring air. Songh shivered delightedly. He’d been too busy with props and petitions to see any rehearsal. He leaned forward in his seat as if expecting miracles, and by halfway through the first act, I was convinced that’s what we were seeing.

  The show was working. I mean, really working. Not just technically, with everyone remembering their lines and blocking and all the effects going right. For the first time since that rough run-through five weeks earlier, the characters and story came to life.

  Mostly it was Mali, with his performance at last fully unleashed. He started wooing the audience on his very first entrance. Once he’d hooked them, he played them like an expert angler. He shared with every eye the same intimate contact: only you understood, only you were his ally. You must therefore love his wife and children as he did, worship his gods with his same devotion, and suffer his pain and confusion as together you sought to reconcile clan tradition with his innovative vision of the future. And with those anguished eyes and radiant smile, Mali drew his fellow actors into the spiral of his energy. They bloomed in his light as if he were the sun they’d been waiting for all along.

  Applause broke like thunder at the first act curtain, long and enthusiastic. I pushed across the crowded house to congratulate Micah. Howie looked as shaky as I’d ever seen him, so painfully hopeful in the face of real evidence that the long, hard weeks and all his struggles and political maneuvering might actually have been worth it.

  Reede Chamberlaine stretched discreetly and sent a subordinate backstage for coffee. “Excellent work, Howard. Let’s talk later about what your publicity department has planned for Mali.”

  Howie looked uncomfortable. “You know, Reede, he’s not going to like it.”

  “Ah yes, the company identity number.”

  “Pretty sure he means it.”

  Chamberlaine’s laugh was like the rustle of silk. “He thinks so now. But all great actors have great egos. The humble act never lasts once they’ve seen the possibilities. I’ll buy the three of us a little chat over an expensive dinner. Give him a taste of things to come. Always works. Trust me.”

  I didn’t, not for an instant. But I was only eavesdropping, and after all, if Howie knew Mali’s father was the Rock, he’d listen to Chamberlaine with a more skeptical ear.

  Onstage, the assistant stage manager stalked around checking the preset. As she crossed down center, I started. Mali had made me forget even that. As the lights dimmed for Act Two, Cris hauled Songh out of the seat beside me and sat down.

  “Did Sam have time to… ?”

  He nodded. “But I can’t find Peter anywhere. Shop says he went home. Looks quiet underneath, though.”

  “How far can the remote signal carry?”

  He chuckled evilly. “How’re you going to manage without me if you don’t learn these things?”

  “Cris…”

  “He won’t be around either, remember.”

  My jaw tightened involuntarily. “How far?”

  “No more than fifty meters. Otherwise we might trigger a few surprises next door in Crossroads. He’s got to be somewhere inside this theatre.”

  I surrendered the knots in my stomach to Mali as soon as he reappeared onstage. He was a stealer of souls. He imprisoned you behind his eyes while he labored to impress the Planter with the mystery and rightness of the ancient magic.

  I had a new insight into the play that afternoon. Our tragic hero’s real crime was not the revealing of clan secrets without consulting his clansmen. The Ancestors might have forgiven that. What they could not forgive was his innocence: he believed that a rapprochement between opposites could be reached, even though the Planter, as the one in power, had no need for rapprochement, no need to see any version of reality but his own. To be innocent and well-meaning in such a world, the play was saying, is to be fatally vulnerable.

  No wonder Sam gave my own innocence a hard time.

  Meanwhile, Two, five rushed toward us. The outraged elders gathered in the ritual clearing and fell prostrate before the materialized image of the Ancestor. The shimmering green of the Matta floated out of the darkness like water filling a void. Gold symbols flickered and danced. Sudden double vision dizzied me as I picked out the tale painted by an apprentice scenographer in a place very far away from that jungle glade. I was Mali and I was myself. I watched with growing dread as he gathered the Matta around him. Cris and Songh tensed forward at the same frightened angle.

  The elders’ chant crescendoed, the ghostly ancestor raised his arms. A soundless impact shook the air, like a giant bubble bursting. Faint diamonds sparkled in the water-green of the Matta. I blinked and Mali was gone.

  “My god,” Cris whispered. “It worked. It fucking worked!”

  “And,” I murmured joyously, “that’s all it did!”

  There were snuffles behind me in the silence, and solemn sighs further down the row. When the grieving widow received the Planter’s funeral gift of a basket of the fruit she had picked herself, the sighs turned to weeping. The standing ovation began in the final blackout and lasted through the swirling, triumphant curtain call, until one of the black-robed figures danced forward and raised a palm.

  The silence was immediate.

  “Dear friends in Harmony,” Omea’s voice sang out from beneath her hood and veil, “this performance is given in memory of Jane.” She whipped her arms down and around. Nine pairs of arms followed. Ten trailing black robes became a glowing sky blue. A flight of white doves burst from the catwalks overhead and swooped low as the company made a final deep ensemble bow.

  Applause broke again, a cascade of cheers and stamping. Here and there a Crossroads company member sat frowning in his seat, but many rose to their feet with everyone else. Out of the sober telling of a tale of death came a cathartic reaffirmation of life. The Eye sent their apprentice audience out of the theatre to face the evening’s uncertainties with energy and resolve.

  I didn’t wait to report to Micah. I ran straight backstage, into a tumult of relief and celebration. I’ve ne
ver been the sort who’ll hug and kiss just anybody, but it was in the air back there, and even Te-Cucularit and the girls got their share from me. The office staff, stage managers, apprentices from Crossroads, mobbed the dressing rooms. Omea reigned as queen of the corridor, with Ule as her jester, gathering compliments like flowers. The crowd thickened outside the room Mali shared with Moussa and Pen. Everyone knocked and called for him, but one of the dressers had been posted to keep people out. I fought my way around the corner to Sam’s room and there was Mali, slumped on a stool while Sam’s strong hands worked on his neck and shoulders.

  “Thank god we made it through without…” I shut the door behind me.

  “He’s going to need a full-time masseur before he’s finished with this place,” Sam remarked.

  Mali grunted and closed his eyes.

  Sam pummeled him harder. “And this lovely young woman wants to know why I don’t just go down there and rip the whole thing out instead of putting you through this.”

  “The show,” I said breathlessly, “was wonderful.”

  “We knew it would work,” said Sam.

  “No, we didn’t.” Mali lifted his head like a tired prince to acknowledge the awe and admiration I could not keep out of my eyes. Mali knew but would never say that unlike the Eye’s earlier ensemble work, this piece was his and his alone. I barely recalled anyone else’s performance. Even Sam’s.

  The door cracked open. “He’s in here, for chrissakes!”

  Howie burst in. “Inspired, gentlemen, truly inspired! Why are you hiding out in here? It’s everything we hoped it would be!”

  “Oh good.” Sam gave Mali a final slap. “Does that mean we can go home now?”

  Howie laughed boisterously. “Only after you’ve finished taking the Town by storm!”

  Liz knocked at the open door and handed in a creamy stiff envelope. “For Mali. And Reede would like a word with the company in the greenroom as soon as they’re out of makeup.”