Powers, Richard - Orfeo

The lights swam up in his rearview mirror. Els signaled and slowed. As he pulled over onto the shoulder, the cop blasted past in the left lane. The lights vanished in a pretty twinkle half a mile away before Els stopped his brittle giggling.

He pulled onto the shoulder, quaking. The music turned into scattered night whispers, rumors in a dark minor. Through banks of doubt, a grim snare drum. Then something burst through the miasma and galloped to a sudden finish. Triumph, or its bitter parody. The People, perhaps: their directed, collective will. Or perhaps the outlaw artist, exit laughing.

Els pulled back out onto the interstate. In the sealed car, aftershock hung in the air as it must have done in Leningrad on the night of the public trial. The audience on its feet for thirty minutes, the conductor holding the score above his head. . And long before Czar Joseph and his Central Committee even have a chance to reach a verdict, the sentence is passed: set free — free to write again, free to be muddled, formalist, esoteric, and unclear, free to satirize, to disgust, to offend, free to pursue whatever shape the notes might take.

Yet the secret police are never wrong, and the work of security is never done. It will all happen again, the ambush from above, the public attack by the engineer of human taste. Shostakovich, sentenced to a lifelong cat-and-mouse game, perpetual target in the war against dissonance, dissidents, and discontent. His music, always variations on the dead man’s jig. Decades later, long after Stalin’s death, the composer will still wear a packet around his neck containing the full text of the article “Muddle Instead of Music.” The words will give him the freedom that only an enemy of the people can feel.

Els merged left, into the lanes feeding toward the Mississippi. The shakes dampened and disappeared, replaced by a great lightness. The siren of the squad car, the germ of a musical idea. The last echo of the Allegro died away, plunging him into the hum of engine and wheels. Once it might have sounded like silence; now the road noise was symphonic.

The smartphone chimed and a window popped up on the screen. He swerved onto the rumble strip, trying to read the message there. The music player was asking him to vote. Two bright icons presented themselves: thumbs up or thumbs down. He had only to click — a swift judgment from his box seat — to decide the fate of the piece again.

He made it to the gathering outskirts of St. Louis. A strip mall, a housing division. Before long Saarinen’s great arch soared up from the horizon, the gateway to the West.

The trained ear can hold up an empty shell and make out the sea it came from.

He reads through the newspaper article that Bonner thrusts at him. A sect of property-sharing polygamists has proclaimed an autonomous city of God somewhere in central Texas. At first he thinks it’s a demented marketing campaign that Bonner has dreamed up for Fowler’s opening: the ecstatic believers, camped out in the desert, singing, praying, and waiting for time to end. The bungled raid by the ATF. The FBI laying siege to the believers’ compound in a cordon as tight as the Prince Bishop’s earthworks around Münster.

Too familiar to take in. What is all this?

Bonner’s doing something with his mouth: call it smiling. He glances at the stage, where John of Leiden, sword in hand, heads into Act Two’s closing barnburner aria, The glory of all the Saints is to wreak vengeance. .

Yeah — how about that? Been going on for weeks. Who knew? Shit happens while you’re busy.

Els scrambles out of his seat and turns up the aisle. Bonner grabs his wrist.

Where you going?

Els doesn’t know. To the nearest television set. To the library. To the office of the artistic director of City Opera to plead innocence.

He lowers himself back into the chair. What do you know about this? He sounds absurd, accusatory.

Only what I read in the papers.

Els stares again at the fulfilled prediction. This can’t be happening.

Bonner’s face lights up. I know, huh? Total gold mine. Somebody’s watching over us.

Els wants to punch the man. Instead, he scrambles back to his feet. Richard doesn’t bother grabbing him again. Els jogs up the aisle and out of the hall, just as the run-through of Act Three begins.

In hours, he knows as much about Waco as anyone. He holes up in his room in Richard’s apartment, camped in front of the TV, surrounded by newspapers. He watches the standoff escalate its nightmare logic: The empire’s war machines. The siege works, cutting off the rebels from the outside. The core of believers huddled around their messiah, living on rainwater and stockpiled rations. He hardly needs to watch; he’s spent three years composing it.

Richard finds him that night watching videotape of the compound taken from an Army helicopter: a few dozen religious zealots bunkered down against the most powerful government on Earth. A voice-over says that the siege is costing the taxpayers a million dollars a week. The camera pans across a nearby caravan of RV vehicles — campers who show up to see how the standoff will play out. They sit along the road in folding chairs, playing cards and barbequing, waiting for the climax of this live theater.

Els speaks in a spectral treble, without turning to look. This isn’t coincidence.

Bonner’s arms are full with pad thai and the day’s rehearsal notes. Peter. Turn it off. Let’s eat.

What does this mean? It has to mean something.

It means we’re a genius, you and me. Absolute psychics.

People will think we. .

There’s no end to what people might accuse them of. Unearned luck. Very bad taste. Opportunism. Some Faustian bargain.

Richard, Els says. We have to stop this.

Right. I’ll get right on the horn to Janet Reno.

Els doesn’t hear. He’s staring at his fisted knuckles. The news segues to a story about the World Health Organization declaring TB a global emergency. Bonner eats; Els watches him. It’s not the siege of Waco Els needs to stop. It’s the siege of Münster.

Two days later, ATF forces overrun the compound. Armored assault vehicles, engineering tanks, tear gas, grenade launchers. Then fire. Els might have told them: everything will burn. Scores of adults and two dozen children, shot, exploded, and immolated, and every detail of the finale beamed around the world on live television.

No need to watch through to the end. Els knows the end; he’s already written it. He stands in Bonner’s apartment in fetid clothes, fingers pressed to his head, waiting to be told what to do. Receiving no commands, he heads out into the blazing day and hops a cab uptown to Lincoln Center.

Richard is in row three, laying into the starving throngs of Münster. I want to hear hope! he shouts. You still believe that God is going to come down and fuck the Prince Bishop and his entire paid mob up the ass!

Els drops into the chair across the aisle. When Bonner sets the onstage planet revolving on its own again, Els tells him the news. The director stares as if Els were a college intern on the lighting crew who has started to give him blocking advice.

Peter, I’m kind of busy. We have previews in six days. Is there something you need?

We can’t do this, Els says.

Bonner blows a raspberry and twists his palms toward heaven. He hoots. His smile is brighter than it has been since Knipperdollinck’s understudy went over the edge of the orchestra pit and smashed his coccyx.

You’re out of your damn mind.

Okay, Els says. We just have to postpone. .