Powers, Richard - Orfeo

Mattison emerged from a nearby cabal. He saluted Els with two fingers . You have them all scratching their heads. The most praise his mentor would ever give him.

Across the thinned room, Els saw Bonner seated in the empty first row, staring at the abandoned stage. Richard didn’t turn when Els dropped into the seat beside him.

“Made for oblivion,” Richard said, in an odd monotone. Check. Now what?

Els sat playing castanets on the pads of his thumbs. We could take it on the road. Bloomington. Hyde Park. Ann Arbor.

Could, Bonner said, meaning no. All his mania from the last half dozen weeks had collapsed into mere agitation. His eyes fixed on a series of invisible one-reelers projected in front of him.

Pleased? Els asked.

What’s that?

I said, are you pleased?

And I said, what’s that?

Somewhere in Bonner’s skull, across great, arid expanses all the way to the horizon, the shit-storm of invention was gathering again. The hall had emptied. At last the composer stood and said, See you?

Richard nodded, but to some other question.

Els caught up with Maddy, out in the foyer with three of the musicians. She was flushed and floating, astonished to have run the gauntlet and survived.

Well , she said, when Els came up. That was an experience!

What she means, the oboist said, is, “Never again!”

I liked your chart, the cellist told Els. But I still think it’d be sweeter without the fire drills.

The oboist laughed. You know what Stravinsky said at the premiere of Pierrot ? “I wish that lady would shut up so I could hear the music.”

The group wrangled for a while over music’s soul, as performers will do before heading out for weed and beers. The pianist and horn player were already at Murphy’s, half a pitcher ahead of everyone. The percussionist drummed on Els’s shoulder.

Time to get wasted. You two coming?

Maddy looked at Els, who begged off. Mind if I go? she asked.

Can I talk to you for a minute first?

Meet us over there, the percussionist called over his shoulder as the trio disappeared.

It was good, Peter, Maddy said. Those songs have something. I heard new things in them, even tonight.

Els helped her into her long buckskin coat. From behind, he clasped her upper arms. You were unreal .

She softened and backed into him. Was I?

From another planet. Madolyn. I love you.

She scrunched her neck and smiled. You love those songs.

I saw something in you tonight. Something I didn’t know was there.

No, she said, and would not meet his eyes. That was performance.

We should get married. Join our lives.

She studied the score etched into the linoleum floor, humming, frantic but soundless.

Move somewhere neither of us has ever been. Find a place and make it ours. Read to each other at night. Take care of one another.

He pressed every button she had. Discover America. Turn life’s rags into a bright quilt. Levitate the Pentagon.

She shook her head at his list, the way she had at the end of the fourth song. She clamped his wrist in a polygraph grip and scrutinized his eyes.

Let’s walk.

Snow was falling, compounding the already knee-high drifts. They walked for a long while, in talk that quieted into something like telepathy. And by midnight, Peter Els was thawing in his love’s bed, hurting with a hope he’d never felt. He was twenty-seven, too old now for selective service, and engaged to be married. And the future held music so fine and clear all he needed was to take dictation.

They wed two weeks later at the Urbana courthouse. Richard Bonner was their lone legal witness. They would suffer their families’ anger later. No one else had to hear this promise.

Maddy made her own dress, of apricot taffeta, pinned with an orchid that cost a week’s worth of Peter’s stipend. Peter dressed in cambric and corduroy. Richard wore his usual black leather. He was there with Els, in the courthouse bathroom, for the retching.

If I didn’t know better, Bonner said, keeping Els’s head from banging the faucet, I’d say you have stage fright.

Els could only groan.

What are you afraid of? I’m assuming you’ve already seen her naked.

Oh, Jesus. Richard. What if I’m wrong for her? What if this isn’t meant to be?

Es muß sein, Maestro.

What if I ruin this woman’s life?

Oh, that would be awful! Especially after swearing to use your powers only for good.

Richard, what am I doing?

You’re leaping, Peter. For the first time in your life. And it’s a thing of beauty.

Bonner sponged the flecks off Els’s collar with a paper towel, then frog-marched him down the courthouse hall alongside the suspects in blue jumpsuits and handcuffs being led off to their own arraignments. Maddy grabbed him outside the courtroom and shook him. We’re good, Peter. Really good! She was radiant throughout the service, and every word the judge pronounced threatened to send her into another giggling bout. Afterward, on the street, Richard serenaded them on a silver kazoo wrapped in pink ribbon. Bach’s Wachet auf : It seemed to Els a very good tune, one that a person might still do all kinds of things with.

And even the least threatening tune will outlast you by generations. There’s pleasure in knowing that, too.

That year is a chance-built symphony. A string of scabrous nightclub burlesques. A psychedelic double album made up of the wildest percussive tracks. Els hears about Tet one afternoon after teaching his ear-training class. Johnson’s bombshell lands not long after.

Bonner directs a mad, high-speed Man and Superman, with incidental music by Els. But his madness is a bagatelle compared to the nightly news: King killed. Rolling riots in every city. The Columbia takeover. The Battle for Paris. Resurrection City on the Washington Mall. Warhol shot. Kennedy killed.

Bonner gets arrested in a campus bar for standing on a table and peeing in a beer mug for Peace. Els and Maddy bail him out.

While yippies trash the stock exchange and the Soviets crush the Prague Spring, Els composes thirty-six variations on “All You Need Is Love,” in the style of everyone from Machaut to Piston. He and Bonner stage a play-in of the “Love Variations” in front of Smith Hall, under the frieze carved with Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, and Palestrina. One hundred performers read through a nonstop tag-team performance.

Something’s happening here. The world egg threatens to crack open. Els’s music cracks open, too, trying to say what’s going on. He and Bonner mount a cabaret in the courtyard of the Illini Union for Turn In Your Draft Card Day. They work up an Eisler-Weill drag show called I’m a Stranger Here Myself .

On New Year’s Eve, Bonner forces the old married couple out on a freezing midnight picnic, deep in the South Farms, under the stars. The trio sit on the iron ground and eat cold lentils, sardines on celery, and frozen Twinkies.

A meal fit for lunatics and saints , Bonner declares. Olympian, he leans back on his elbows. Who knew a guy like us could have such friends?

Steam escapes their mouths, and, huddled together, they toast the vanishing year. Maddy pours the champagne into paper cones. Bonner insists they clink. Bubbly spills from the mushy flutes onto the frozen earth.

To putting the past to bed, Richard toasts.