Powers, Richard - Orfeo

He took the device and played. He stroked and pinched the screen, typing with his thumbs the way Fidelio used to sing. He pulled up the mapping app. The former music box was now a compass needle floating above the site of Shade Arbors, Naxkohoman, Pennsylvania. She dictated an address, which he keyed in. A thin green line materialized, running from the needle off the screen.

Klaudia Kohlmann smacked her forehead with the butt of her hand. Shit. You’ll need the charger.

She rose and hobbled toward the facility. At the automatic glass door, she wheeled around. Don’t even think about moving.

More Partch: “I heard music in the voices all about me, and tried to notate it. .” That’s all that I tried to do, as well.

Els cradled the four-inch screen. Driving instructions unfurled alongside the postage-stamp map, too small for seventy-year-old eyes to read. He looked up, toward the garden plots. The air droned like the tinnitus that had plagued him in his sixties and made him want to mercy-kill himself. One low trill split into two, a minor second. The interval turned metallic. A moment more, and the pitches collapsed back into unison.

The ringing resumed, a Lilliputian air raid. The new chord bent into more grating intervals — a flat third, widening to almost a tritone — a glacial creation like Xenakis or Lucier, one of those cracked Jeremiahs howling in the wilderness, looking for a way beyond. The sky-wide trill filled the air with sonic pollen, like the engines of a fleet of interstellar spaceships each the size of a vanilla wafer. It filled the air at every distance, too sweet for locusts or cicadas. Bats didn’t shriek in broad daylight, and birds didn’t sing in chorus. Something abundant and invisible was playing with harmony, and Els turned student again.

A quartet of Shade residents came through the sliding glass, William Bock among them. Seeing his teacher, the ceramic engineer stopped to listen. Holy crap! What’s that?

The guessing began, but no theory held up. In the distance, children with pennywhistles, wind clacking the branches, the hiss of pole-mounted power transformers, a murmuration of starlings, rooftop ventilation units, a muffled marching band drilling on a school football field miles away.

That’s how Lisa Keane, dressed for gardening, found them, a geriatric flash mob standing on the front walk, looking skyward at nothing.

Frogs , she told them. Tree frogs. Singing to each other .

Amphibians improvising, toying with fantastic dissonant choruses: it seemed no less outrageous to Els than his own life.

I can’t tell you what species, Keane said . Two dozen dialects, in these parts.

Els asked, What are they saying?

Oh: The usual. It’s cool and moist. We’re alive. Come here. What else is there to sing about?

This was the woman whom music didn’t move. Els closed his eyes, transcribing airborne harmonies from a time when sending a message over distance was life’s best feat. Listen to this: listen to this .

How long have they been going?

Oh, I don’t know. A hundred million years?

No. I mean. . how long, this year?

The ex-Benedictine calculated. Off and on every morning for the last month.

Bock said, Get out of town!

In another minute, the miracle wore thin and the group wandered off to the shuttle bus. Soon only Keane, Els, and a bent man who moved like a broken-winged eagle were left clinging to the harsh serenade.

At last Kohlmann returned, dangling a power adapter. Oh, geez. What now?

Els pointed treeward at the strobing sound. Kohlmann scowled.

Ach — nature, again? The whole thing is out of control.

Tree frogs , Keane said.

It surprised Els: the ex-nun had a crush on the transactional analyst.

Okay, Kohlmann conceded . Tree frogs. And we need to know this. . why?

Lisa Keane grazed Kohlmann’s forearm and shot her a crumpled smile. Amphibia would not trouble anyone much longer. She waved goodbye and headed down the walk toward her square of cultivated earth.

Klaudia handed Els the adapter. You figure it out. Just do what the Voice tells you, even if you think she’s wrong. Her ways are mysterious, but the Voice has a higher plan for you.

Els said, Can you tell me where I’m going?

My son’s cabin, in the Alleghenies. He and his swarm go in for that kind of thing. Grazing in the poisonous plants. Picking diseased ticks out of each other’s scalps. Got it from his father.

I can’t camp in your son’s house.

They love having other crazies use the place. The four of them are cutting their way through Indonesia with machetes at the moment. You should see my grandchildren. It’s all the bovine growth hormone.

You don’t want the federal government. .

Kohlmann clucked her tongue and wagged her finger like a tiny wiper. Phhh. The key is stuck in an abandoned wasp’s nest in the rafter above the back door. I think there’s a telephone hiding in that thing, somewhere. If you get in trouble, punch the little phone button and tap “Me.”

I can’t take your phone.

I’ve got two more.

But your mail. Your music. Your Web.

I’ve been trying to get off the thing for five months. You’re helping me manage my addiction. She sat up on the bench, pretending to rejuvenation. Hey! Listen. You hear that? Little reptiles, singing!

Els stared down at the device in his lap. Why are you doing this for me? I mean, considering. .

Shut up and use it. I’ve got unlimited everything. None of this minutes shit.

I’ll get it back to you. This weekend.

She waved him off. Fine. And when you get to the cabin? Do me the favor and shower.

He stood and stepped toward the parking lot, now far away. He glanced back at Kohlmann. Her right hand visored her eyes.

Thank you? she asked.

He didn’t understand the question. For what?

She hooked a thumb back toward the entrance.

For today. I’ve listened to that thing a dozen times and never heard it until this morning.

My cultures can’t be called back now. They’re off and doubling, like the brooms of the sorceror’s apprentice.

Richard Bonner took Els’s four art settings of Borges texts and turned them into madcap theater. He made Maddy and the ensemble — horn, oboe, cello, piano, and percussion — start all over again. At first Els tried to manage the damage. He stood at his new friend’s elbow during rehearsals, pointing out what might not be realistic. But realism was Bonner’s punching dummy. Let’s try this , he’d say every few minutes, and if Els or Maddy or any of the players objected, the giant Texan son of an abusive evangelist shot back, A little experiment is going to kill you?

Richard paid Maddy strange court, wooing her for a larger plan. Els didn’t get it; he expected his wholesome, quilting girlfriend to shrink from the man’s mania. But Maddy lapped up Bonner’s every attention. He brought her jewels — rococo things that no sane person would let touch their body: a varnished gecko skull on a brass stick pin. A clasp made from a cicada corpse. Guileless Maddy wore them with gusto.

Look at you! Richard said. You look like a vestal virgin in heat .

But she held her own against him. Once, when he was trying to get her to walk like a robot, Maddy grabbed Richard by the chamois shirt, twisted the cloth in her fist, and asked, You need this? I could make something interesting with it.