William Kienzle - Deadline for a Critic

So, much to the chagrin and downright anger of the local fine arts community, the deal was struck. Groendal had his pulpit.

It was almost midnight when Groendal let himself and Harison into the now otherwise deserted building. They would have arrived sooner had not Groendal—over Harison’s fruitless protest—insisted on stopping for another dessert and liqueur.

Groendal went directly to the editorial room where three word processors waited. Considering all the alcohol he’d had this evening, he walked very steadily. Harison followed, stopping only to gather Groendal’s mail, which he placed on the desk at which Ridley chose to work. Then Harison sat at a neighboring desk, to leaf through news releases.

Groendal wasted no time. After programming the VDT, he began feeding it immediately. This confirmed Harison’s hunch that Groendal had mentally written this review long before . . . likely before the concert had even begun.

As he typed, Groendal gave vent to self-satisfied little cluckings, as he always did when writing a review. Harison, used to the sounds, paid little attention.

In short order, the review was finished. The ritual, peculiar to the two, proceeded. Groendal pushed himself from the machine and Harison moved in to read the copy on the display terminal.

Harison had to adjust his vision to discern the small white characters on the green background. Groendal moved around the desk and began going through his accumulated mail.

Groendal’s style was so familiar to Harison that it was easy to skim the copy. He looked for the telltale phrases, clauses, that were the hallmark of a Groendal review. After all these years, they were not difficult to spot. “. . . wrestling running passages strenuously to the stage floor and pushing uncomfortably the strident tones of a violin, which, in David Palmer’s hands, became a deadly weapon . . .”

Ah, yes. Clearly—had there been any doubt?—this was not destined to be a favorable notice. “. . . Palmer’s tendency to be treacly . . .”

Another.

“After an uncertain beginning, Palmer led the tremolando strings through a tangled maze of fragmented phrases and passingly inhibited emotions.”

This might be one of Ridley’s better efforts.

“The Midwest Chamber Players might be directed back to the drawing board. The Schubert and Mendelssohn did not work together. The Beethoven, for example, was tame and humorless as a result of being sandwiched between these two majestic and stentorian pieces. His chaste little quintet almost died of suffocation. The entire performance contained passages that were lost in amorphous rhapsody and, with it all, the players missed a needed sense of intuitive mania.”

While Harison continued to read—or, more actually, scan—the review, Groendal created a steady tattoo of pieces of junk mail hitting the metal wastebasket. Publicity releases and promotional pieces followed one another to the trash.

Harison scanned on.

“Palmer’s interpretation was tainted by Mendelssohn’s neuroticism, aided and abetted by the ensemble’s aberrant phrasing.”

The tattoo had let up. Harison glanced at his friend. Groendal, having disposed of the junk mail, was starting on the first class mail. Harison returned to the review.

“The Beethoven might have been better had it not been for Palmer’s quivering hypersensitivity to the most minute whines of the score. Thus the audience was subjected to almost shockingly bland odd gobblings which, in no time at all”—Groendal was in rare form—“became a little amorphous.”

“Why that pompous son of a bitch!”

Harison looked at Groendal. His mouth was working, but nothing coherent was escaping. His outburst apparently had been occasioned by the letter he was reading. As he slammed the page down, his fist hit the table. The impact must have hurt, but his obvious anger seemed to sublimate the pain. He picked up another letter. Harison returned his attention to the review.

“Palmer seems determined to cement his reputation as Lord High Commissioner of all that is declamatory, bombastic, and pretentious in music. His is the stolid, detached, and uninspired attitude that so often infects leaders of chamber groups. This evening’s offerings produced nothing so much as a potpourri of embarrassments.”

Groendal uttered something, Harison had difficulty making out what. Something like, “She can’t get away with this! She won’t get away with this!”

“Were you talking to me?”

“What? No! No!” Groendal slammed the second letter on the desk and with the opener quite literally attacked a third envelope.

Harison read on. Mercifully for David Palmer and the Midwest Chamber Players, there wasn’t much more. “Overall, the string sound was overwhelmingly undernourished, entirely and unfortunately due to Mr. Palmer’s utter lack of music substance. Not that Palmer was inventive enough to take any chances with his program. Tonight’s performance was analogous to a trapeze artist trying to ensure the safety of his act by refusing to let go of the bar. To carry this torturous metaphor to its fatal conclusion, Palmer had better never try to perform without a net.”

“Say,” Harison commented, “this is rather good, Rid.”

“Who does he think he is, God Almighty?” Groendal quite obviously was not responding to Harison. Rather, the critic was focusing his total concentration on a letter he was now crumpling into a small wad. “By God, I’ll show him who’s God!”

Harison grew attentive. It was difficult to see clearly by the soft fluorescent glow of the desk lamp, the sole light they had turned on. But it appeared that Groendal’s face was becoming flushed. Harison was only too well aware of how very far Groendal had strayed from a sensible diet this evening.

“Rid, are you all right?”

Groendal now seemed oblivious to Harison’s presence. He bounced the crumpled letter against the desk top and selected yet a fourth envelope.

“Of course! This one had to be from him! Four of a kind! All present and accounted for! All ganging up against me, are they? Well, we’ll just see who gets the last laugh!”

Groendal tore the envelope away from the letter, spread the two pages on the desk and quickly, furiously read through it, pausing only to spit out invective.

“That’s . . . that’s ancient history!” He clutched at his tie, jerking it loose from his neck. “He wouldn’t dare bring that up! Why, it was as much his fault as it was mine!” Suddenly, he turned frantic. He first fumbled with, then tore at his shirt, popping off the top buttons.

“Rid! Calm down!” Harison moved to Groendal’s side. “Calm down! You’re only upsetting yourself! Get hold of yourself!”

“Peter!” Groendal’s eyes bulged. Rising from his chair, he clutched Harison’s jacket with both hands, shaking the smaller man like a doll. “Peter! None of them could do it alone! I could beat them one by one! I’ve done it before! Lots of times! They could never get away with this otherwise! But . . . Peter! But . . . Peter!” Groendal pulled Harison so close their noses almost touched. Now desperately concerned, Harison was unable to move. He could not escape Groendal’s clutch.

“Peter . . . Peter . . . I . . . Peter! Oh, God . . . this can’t be! I need . . . more time! Peter! Peter! Stay!”

Abruptly, Groendal released his grip, made a clutching gesture toward his chest and pitched forward, burying Harison beneath him.

It was Harison’s turn to experience fear. He was pinned beneath what he was certain was literally dead weight. But in times of terror, some people’s strength becomes as the strength often, whether or not their hearts are pure. With such unexpected strength, Harison pushed Groendal up and off him.