Three

by Shoshi

that be? Mozart died years before the book was published. Yet here was this mysterious page of music loose inside it. She tried to hum the notes, but she couldn’t quite do it. She didn’t know enough to read music at sight. She’d have to show it to her dad, see if he could play it or sing it and guess if it was part of the Requiem.

  At that moment Mathew panted into the room. “I’ve got ‘em,” he said, still out of breath. “Six pills. I hope you’re happy now.”

  “Super!” she said. “Really super. Now—you want to be blown away? Look at this. I found these pages in one of Dad’s old Mozart books.” She showed him the page of sheet music and the hand-written note that had fallen into her lap.

  He looked at the music. “Is it the Reckie?” he asked. “You think that’s Mozart’s hand-writing? What’s it doing in this book?”

  “Somebody must’ve put it there.”

  “And, then, forgot it? Forgot they had a page of music written by the almighty Mozart? Not likely.” He flipped the sheet of music over. “There’s nothing on the back---only scribbles.” He was about to flip it back.

  “Wait,” she said. “What was the name of that singer Dad said was one of the people who rehearsed this thing with Mozart?”

  “Benny something,” said Mathew. “No, I remember. It was Benedict---Benedict Schack. Something like that.”

  Carol pointed to a name inked on the upper left corner of the back of the page of sheet music. It was almost smudged out, but Mathew began to feel a scary shiver creeping up his back. There was no question about it. It spelled “Schack.”

  “Wow, Carol, maybe it is his handwriting,” he said. “Mozart, I mean. Maybe this was music he gave this guy to sing.”

  She looked at her watch. “We’ve got about three hours, Mathew, or the Requiem will never be finished. Any ideas?”

  “Totally none.” He thought about it. “You know, one thing we haven’t tried is one of those talismans that guy last night was talking about.”

  “Well, we don’t have a magic talisman. Maybe I should have stayed and listened to that lecture---but I didn’t. Somehow we’ve got to find a way to do this ourselves. We’ve got to believe we can do it---and then--just plain-- do it!” she said, almost spitting out the words. “Where’s that book, the one with the pictures?”

  She opened it up to where the pictures were all clumped in one place. “Here’s the house on Rauben-stein-gusher. You know, that street,” she said. “There’s his bedroom window.”

  “Hey, you know something, Carol? Mozart’s window looks a little like your window in here. Well, sort of.”

  “No, ours has a yellow pane of glass in it.”

  He could see she was getting very determined about the time travel thing. “Mathew, focus up, please. We have to concentrate to make this work. Zoom in on his window,” she commanded. “Close your eyes and start pretending. Pretend to go right through it into his house! Pretend, Mathew!! Pretend! Pretend!”

  “I am pretending, dammit!” he cried. This was stupid, he thought. It was all against physics. Pretending was pretending. It wasn’t real. At least he knew the difference.

  “Wait a minute,” she said suddenly. “Let me have that page of music we found! We need to show it to him.” Mathew handed it over.

  “What’ll I do with the other page that fell out?” he asked.

  “What’s on it? Maybe it belongs to Schack, too.”

  “It’s a note—in German. Hey, look at this.” He showed her a familiar scribble at the bottom of the note.

  “Wow!” she said. “Mozart signed it, and, look, it’s got Schack’s name at the top. I wonder what it says.”

  “Probably telling him to bring along some lox and cream cheese.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said. “Sometimes, Mathew, I think you don’t have a single romantic bone in you.” Wonderingly, she fingered the “M” in Mozart’s fancy signature. “You know what I think?” She hesitated. “We were meant to find this stuff.”

  A dreaming look came over her face. He had seen it before when they pretended things. “Mathew, I wonder if---his signature could be a talisman.” She placed her finger again on the composer’s curlicue signature and lightly caressed it from one end to the other.

  They began to hear distant singing—ethereal voices floating in to them across outer space. Mathew glanced at Carol and started to giggle. This was just too corny for words. Then, Carol realized what it was. “It’s Dad,” she said.

  At the end of the work day when the last patient had gone home, he liked to fill his office with music turned down low. His kind of music, not the easy-listening pop he had to play for his patients all day. His kind of music being stuff like Mozart arias.

  But the singing wouldn’t go away. A thin alto voice was humming along with a tenor and a bass. It seemed live, not a recording. It was gauzy and otherworldly—but it also sounded strangely real.

  “Hey,” whispered Mathew. “It’s the Reckie. I recognize it.”

  No, thought Carol, it’s not the “Requiem.” We’re imagining it. It’s not anything. She looked at him uncomprehendingly as he slowly seemed to lose shape and focus, seemed to disintegrate into bubbles of light, a foam of nothingness. “Don’t!” she tried to cry out. “No, Mathew!” But she felt unable to say anything, to move, even to feel anything. Instead the world had become a slow-motion movie slipping downwards, ever downwards between the spiraling walls of a terrifyingly dark tunnel. She was moving at incredible speed, and yet she was going ever faster and faster. Yes, he’s right, it is the “Requiem,” she thought, but it was now wildly distorted and impossibly loud, and, abruptly, everything was dizziness and silence as she lost consciousness, lost any awareness of even being alive.

  And, then, there they were sprawled on the floor of a room she had never been in before. Conscious, alive again, seeing, hearing and breathing. Was it seconds later—or was it a thousand years? She didn’t know, couldn’t tell. It could have been either. One thing she did know: the “Requiem” was still being sung, softly filling the air around them.

  “Mathew, what’s happened to us?” she asked almost inaudibly.

  “I think,” he said holding his head in his hands, “I think, Carol, we became electrons. At least for a couple of micro-seconds.”

  “We’re not in Dad’s library,” she said peering around her in wonder.

  “Definitely not,” he said.

  It reminded Carol of one of the pictures in that Mozart book they’d been looking at. A fire fussed and spat in a marble fireplace that had a huge, gold-framed mirror reaching up above it. On a nearby wall was a portrait of a snooty man in a white wig and a red coat with a platoon of gold buttons marching down the front of it.

  And that’s when this paunchy little guy in knickers showed up. It wasn’t clear where he’d come from. He was just---there. He wore funny-looking, rimless glasses and was dressed in a long black jacket, and his hair, what there was of it, was slicked straight back on both sides of his head. You couldn’t tell how old he was, but he sure wasn’t young. He had some jumbled sheets of music under one arm. He said something to them in an anxious voice, and they immediately realized it wasn’t English.

  “I think it’s German,” said Carol quietly. “He’s talking German. One of the teachers speaks it a little.”

  He stared at them. He had heard her. “You are not German,” he said in very halting English. “You are English. I speak it quite good-- from living in London. I have not speak it in long time. A fine language like German--but less refined.”

  “‘He speak it quite good?’ Who’s he kidding?” whispered Mathew.

  The man smiled and touched Carol on the head. “Such beautiful hair,” he said. “Your clothes are strange. You must be Josef’s children. Born in London, yes? Of course. You are here to see Constanze. The niece of Josef, I think. I must go in. I am late.”

  Just the
n he caught sight of the sheet of music which Carol had been holding. “Wie geht es Ihnen?” He snatched it from her hand and looked at it. He seemed shocked. “Here is music! I thought I lose it. The Master wrote it out for me. Schack! See, my name is on back. Vielen dank!” And before Carol could protest, he was off.

  He opened a door which Mathew noted had not been there before. It was just a blank wall only a minute ago. The open door let out a gust of warm air and the odor of a sick room and gave them a brief glimpse of a chamber beyond. A little man dressed in a white nightgown sat propped up in a chair. He had a rather large nose and bulging eyes. They kept him from being particularly handsome, but he looked very sensitive as only an artist can look. He was waving a hand and humming as two other musicians holding sheets of music stood by his chair and sang. The door closed behind Herr Schack.

  Carol and Mathew stared at each other.

  “It’s Mozart,” whispered Carol—overwhelmed with awe. She was reminded of the image they had seen in the lavender fog inside Madame Oolala’s crystal globe.

  • SEVEN •

  “Nah, it can’t be Mozart,” said Mathew. “It’s impossible.”

  “It is,” she said quietly and fearfully. “You know, I think we may be time travelling.”

  “You really think so?” he said. “Sure smells in there. Like no one takes a bath around here.”

  “Can’t get too close to them,” said Carol. “Dad says in those