Mark Dunn - American Decameron

“And what if you choose to write at night?”

“I write at night quite often, Perce. Upon mutual agreement all new pages must be surrendered to Rafferty or to one of his associates and put into the box the very next day. We have it down to a perfect little science, I think.”

Percy took out his sandwich and began to remove the wax paper that enwrapped it. “Has ‘Myself’ made an appearance during the many months you’ve been working on the new concerto?”

“Once or twice late at night. I dare say that if the full manuscript had been at hand, he would have tossed it into the hearth fire.”

“Why?”

“Because Myself finds my work to be absolute shit, not worth playing or being heard. He also came once on the eve of a visit by the soloist, Mr. Edwards.”

“Otherwise known as ‘Ukulele Ike,’” Percy offered with a grin.

Aaron nodded, his mouth filled with ham and cheese sandwich. “He wanted to see how things were coming along. Just prior to his visit, things had not been going well. I was inclined to burn every measure I’d written and start again from scratch. I didn’t do it, as luck would have it — as the thoughtfully provident Music Director Carl Denton would have it — because one of my keepers was there: Miss Julie. Miss Julie was there with her luscious lazuline eyes, which twinkled while seeming to whisper to me, ‘I see it in your face, Mr. Francis: the self-doubt. But I feel compelled to warn you that if you cook even a single page of that manuscript in your new Hughes Electric Range oven, there will be consequences too grim to even imagine.’”

“And did that snap you out of it, my friend?”

With a nod: “I was well aware of what one of those consequences would be, and it was grim indeed: that my gainly guardian should go, and then I should die the death of a thousand wistful sighs.”

Percy took a sip of still-hot coffee from his vacuum flask and asked his friend about his mother, for whose benefit Aaron had purchased the new stove. “How long do you anticipate that she’ll be staying with you?”

“Perhaps indefinitely. Certain recent episodes of queer behavior on the part of dear Mother have demonstrated the infeasibility of her continuing to live on her own. I’m sure that I inherited my demons from her. Psychological derangement seems to be the family curse.”

“If it is a curse that must be borne alongside your incredible gifts for music and whimsy — gifts that are making possible the world’s first concerto for ukulele and orchestra, dear chum — then you must learn to bear your cross with dignity, and yes, even with some measure of gratitude.”

Aaron nodded. Then he said soberly, “But you haven’t met ‘Myself.’ And I would never wish it, most especially upon my best friend.”

When the stay at Crater Lake had concluded, Percy Llewellyn returned to his piano lessons, and to his instrumental participation in various local concert and dance bands, and to playing the organ for Douglas Fairbanks adventures and Fatty Arbuckle comedies. And he returned to his lonely bachelor suppers at the Rex Café, and to falling in love (vicariously speaking) with every pretty new piano student above the age of sixteen and every beautiful woman who would catch his eye from across the dance floor. And the cloud of depression would periodically roll in and Percy would take to his bed for a brief season. Life went on thusly with little variance.

Several miles west of Medford, in Jacksonville, it was a different matter for the great American composer Aaron Francis, who dared with a smirk of mischief to give the world its first concerto for that Hawaiian instrument presently finding its way into hundreds of new works of popular music. A month after Aaron’s trip to Crater Lake National Park, he was visited by the maestro himself, Carl Denton, who had come to check on the progress of the concerto, to see how things were going with his sometimes beleaguered overseers, and even (an organist virtuoso, he) to play, on a whim, the “Mighty Wurlitzer” in accompaniment for The Sheik , starring Rudolph Valentino, at a local movie house.

Denton was especially taken with Aaron’s mother Mamie, a woman of noticeably good breeding, a fine cook, and one who loved her talented son even through the frequent fogs of her own cyclothymic cycles.

During his last night in Jacksonville, over dinner, the permanent conductor of the Oregon Symphony apologized to Aaron. “Now you must forgive me for treating you so criminally, Francis. This commission is very important for raising the profile of our new symphony orchestra. The fact that one of the best Vaudevillian musicians and arguably the best ukulele player in the country has been engaged to play an Aaron Francis premiere necessitated my taking great care to prevent any sort of setback. Your history of destroying concert scores in which you’ve lost faith is legendary. And it’s not the kind of legend I’m happy to bruit about. You understand, don’t you?”

“So when I return with you to Portland tomorrow to meet the members of your organization, into whose custody will we place the score?”

Denton thought about this. “Since you’ve refused my offer to have either a hand or photostatic copy made of the work in progress, we shall have to find someone to whom to entrust it.”

“I’d be happy to keep an eye on it,” volunteered Mrs. Francis. “Or am I not to be trusted?”

“I have no reason not to put my confidence in you, dear woman,” said the conductor. “Mr. Francis, do you agree?”

“Since I do not wish to share the work with members of your orchestra prematurely, and because Rafferty and Miss Julie and the perpetually drowsy Mr. Snopes would all be happy to have a two-day holiday from staring at me like a watched pot for ten or eleven hours a day, I can devise no better solution.”

It was decided, then, that the manuscript should remain behind in the care of Mrs. Francis.

That night, as Aaron was packing his smallest suitcase for the brief trip, his mother came into his dressing room and said, “When you played some of the piece for Mr. Denton and me on the piano this afternoon, I was thinking that it should be livelier, much happier in its tone. Ukulele music, by its nature — why, it’s supposed to have some pep to it, isn’t it? Since when has music from the islands ever moved a listener to uncontrollable melancholia?”

“What I played for you — it moved you to melancholia?”

“It did, Aaron. Should I iron these trousers for you?”

“They’re fine. Who would have thought it?”

“Thought what?”

“My concerto to be anything but exultant. Mother, I believe that you are the exceptional case.”

“I’m quite certain that I am not. Don’t forget your razor strop.”

“Well, what do you want me to do about it? You don’t have to come to the performance in March. In fact, I’d rather you not be there if the music is only going to depress you.”

“I won’t be singular in my view. You’ll see. There will be people who will hear it and imagine that the Hawaiians have become just as morose as the Scandinavians.”

“I’ve never heard such flummery in all my life. Is this why you agreed to come and live here, Mother? To spout nettling inanities about my work whenever you take the notion?”

“You’ll see.”

“Stop saying that.” Aaron closed his suitcase and cinched the straps around it. “I’ve asked my cook and housekeeper, Mrs. Cutberth, to stay with you while I’m gone. For your own safety.”

“Like mother, like son.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But you do, Aaron. I know that you do.”

Mrs. Cutberth had very little to do. Mrs. Francis was offended each time the cook got herself anywhere near the new Hughes Electric Range Oven, though Aaron’s description of his mother’s psychological infirmity gave the older woman to imagine Mrs. Francis putting her head into the oven — not necessarily to asphyxiate herself (it not being a gas appliance) but to burn herself up like an over-crisped roast chicken.