The Blue Guitar Read online

  “What are you drinking?” Manuel peers at the glass of red liquid.

  “Bloody Mary, minus the blood and minus Mary,” Jon says. “The liver’s become a conscientious objector.”

  Manuel straddles the padded stool, but only the tips of his toes reach the floor. This country is full of such small humiliations. Electronic music pulses in the background, a computer mimicking oboe and strings, even brass. The barkeep brings him a pint of ale.

  “That last girl …” Jon winces.

  “Nina,” Manuel says, remembering the fine-boned Mexican girl, pride of the University of Veracruz, who fell apart during her recent performance in the studio. She played the first piece like an angel, but during the modern work she lost her way yet insisted on ploughing on, a shambles, until to their horror she began to weep. She kept playing while tears splashed onto the soundboard, and Manuel hadn’t dared order her to stop, any more than he would have jumped in front of a runaway train. The episode left both men feeling mean and ill.

  “Remind me never to sign on for this job again,” Jon says. “We should be like Portia, swanning in to judge only advanced rounds.”

  They chink glasses as Jon stares gloomily into the mirror at his own hunched form. Manuel remembers the teenage Jon wearing an oversized jersey from his beloved Manchester United, playing Granados under a tree in that hillside town in southern Italy where a festival convenes each summer. Smyth had been the star that season, performing with obvious joy. Today his face looks haggard, his eyelids heavy, that fine hair beginning to thin on top. When young people start to grow old, it is particularly sad.

  “Does sweating through a competition make you a better musician?” Jon asks. Without waiting for a reply he barges on. “It’s about building a fucking career.”

  “As you did,” Manuel points out. “And so you have this excellent position at the university —”

  “A position, right,” Jon cuts him off. “Seventy percent tedium and politics.” Their eyes meet in the mirror. “Even my most gifted students crave safety. They talk about landing jobs at colleges and universities with pensions and health plans. That’s what this generation desires, Manuel. They’re not willing to knock around the world, playing recitals in gymnasiums, carving a reputation from pure gut and talent, not like you, Manuel. You’re a dying breed, my friend.”

  “They are sensible,” Manuel says.

  “Sensible,” Jon agrees. “‘What must I do to get a job like yours?’” they ask. “‘What are the most important competitions?’”

  “Another round?” The bartender flicks his towel over the counter, and the men nod a synchronized “yes.”

  No matter how much Manuel drinks, he is still thirsty.

  Smyth draws a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket. “Whom are we going to sprinkle with fairy dust today?”

  Manuel digs out his own list, knowing there will be arguments about the contenders. He reads off several names, and when he reaches Lucy Shaker, the other man snorts.

  “Are you joking? We’re in the business of launching careers, not rewarding middle-aged hobbyists.”

  “There was something interesting in her playing,” Manuel protests.

  “Really?”

  “She wasn’t mimicking a performance.” That isn’t quite what Manuel means.

  “Ah.” Jon lifts one long leg to cross the other and smoothes the material of his khakis. “But is that enough?”

  “I only know what I hear.”

  Jon clears his throat. “Of course, I trust you implicitly. If anyone’s got sharp ears, it’s Manuel Juerta.”

  Manuel acknowledges this flattery with a nod. Jon isn’t the least bit convinced, of course, and so the deal-making begins.

  An hour and a half later they’ve whittled the list down to twelve, and the two weary judges have polished off another round along with a platter of tourtière, the tasty minced beef pie native to the province. The bar has filled with office workers: women in short skirts and high heels, men sheathed in skinny pants with open-collared shirts.

  Smyth chips away at the last of the meat pie. “We’ll get you down to my college to teach a master class. Interested?”

  “Certainly,” Manuel says.

  “The dean will spring for a modest recital fee, but we can lay on extra for expenses and teaching a master class. What do you say, amigo?”

  “I say yes.”

  Jon slaps him on the shoulder. “Consider yourself booked.”

  They are silent for several minutes, the letdown after strenuous negotiations.

  Manuel got through to Lucia late last night. She’d gone to visit Eric at the detention centre, taking him sandwiches and fruit. “He was so pale,” she said over the crackly phone line. “Papa promises he’ll be out by the end of the week, but I don’t know. Papa isn’t so powerful now.”

  Listening to this plaintive description, Manuel sat cross-legged on his bed on the seventh floor of the boutique hotel, eyeing a room service trolley that held two steaming platters covered with metal lids.

  “Where is your college?” he asks Jon.

  Jon names a state in the Southwest.

  “Maybe you can create a permanent position for me at this college,” Manuel says.

  Smyth peers at a handful of Canadian bills before selecting one and placing it under his glass. “Tell me you’re not serious.”

  “I am always serious.”

  “You don’t want to even think of such a thing, not at your stage of the game. It would absolutely mutilate your soul.”

  “My soul is already mutilated.”

  They walk out together into the early evening, sunlight careening off the flank of the high-rise across the street.

  Jon looks around in all directions, his small head bobbing. “I’d love to have you join us. What a dream.” His long nose makes him seem like an elegant mammal, perhaps an antelope. “Your technique is brilliant, but —” He pauses to whistle in admiration as a yellow sports car roars past. “Fucking brilliant, but not precisely what we teach in our academy.” He grabs Manuel’s elbow, and they dart through two lanes of traffic to the opposite sidewalk where Jon stands, barely winded, and Manuel feels his chest tighten and wheeze.

  “If we teach opposite forms, the poor creatures will be even more confused than they are now,” Jon says, waiting for Manuel to agree. When this doesn’t happen, he continues. “It’s a bloody bore being chair of the department. All these accommodations and decisions. One is more politician than musician. But you’ll come to visit us next term, yes?” He dives into his pocket to retrieve his phone and scrutinizes the tiny screen. “Interdepartmental meeting postponed,” he reads aloud. Then he adds, “One is cancelled, but another appears. Such is my life.”

  “Names are posted!” Larry races past Toby’s door like the white rabbit, leaving his scarred guitar lying across his bed. The others pop out of their cells: will they be invited to join the semifinal round, or will they return home, stricken with shame and excuses?

  Toby pulls out his ear buds, rolls off the bed where he was napping, and slowly buttons his shirt. So this is it. This is why he came. That sharp metallic taste in his mouth appears again. He skips the elevator, which is going crazy jumping between floors to pick up contestants, and lopes down the fire stairs.

  Sixty-five members of the guitar congress mash around the bulletin board in the foyer of the Fine Arts Building. Only twelve names are posted, twelve names printed off a sheet of white paper. Urgent castings for glitches in alphabetical order are fruitless — there are no such errors.

  Toby doesn’t stampede to the front. Instead he holds back a dignified distance and runs over the way he played in the preliminary round, and for the life of him, can’t imagine anyone did better.

  “Dumb fucks,” someone moans. A fist slams the wall. It belongs to Marcus, a young man from London. With his cropped hair and spotty face, he looks like a soccer hooligan, not one of England’s finest young interpreters of the pre-Baroque repertoire. He
didn’t make the cut. Even the best can have a bad day.

  Trace appears at Toby’s side, reeking of bubble gum. “Hausner, right?”

  Toby nods.

  “I saw your name up there.” She waits for his response, but Toby betrays nothing, though inside the beast stirs. “You don’t look exactly thrilled.”

  Trace doesn’t understand that he’s been measuring out the scene in spoonfuls. “Give me time,” he says.

  She pops a bubble. The tough girl exterior can’t hide an orthodontist’s pricey work.

  “What about you?” Toby remembers to ask.

  “Ditto.”

  He stares at her. “Ditto you made it?”

  She shrugs. “I thought it would be way harder.”

  The crowd begins to thin as the lucky ones head for the exit to practise like demons for round two while everyone else makes for the pub to drown their disappointment in beer.

  “Fifty-three people tanked,” Trace proclaims in awe.

  Toby cringes: does she have no pity for the poor devils slinking off? Many will roll back to the dorm at two or three in the morning, making plenty of racket — a tiny but satisfying revenge on the successful. He inhales the whole sweeping drama, and only when the foyer is nearly clear does he walk over and read his name in bold type. It’s like breathing snow, and he feels the back of his throat tingle.

  “And now you must go fishing.”

  Toby spins to face Manuel Juerta, who stands before him holding his upturned Panama hat full of bits of folded paper. Juerta gives the hat a shake, and Toby plucks a number. He’s never seen the task done in such an improvisatory way. The draw will determine playing order for round two.

  Unfolding the bit of paper, Toby makes a face. “One,” he reads aloud.

  Juerta makes a cooing noise, possibly sympathetic.

  So he will play first. He’s barely finished the opening round and now he must dash back to the dorm to prepare for the second program, a different set of pieces. In fourteen hours he’ll be onstage again. It’s all happening so fast. After years of waiting, it’s full steam ahead.

  Trace steals up, sandwich in hand, and Juerta jiggles the hat near her nose. “Determine your fate, young lady.”

  She dips her greasy fingers into the hat, lifts a chit and unfolds it. Six. “Is this good?” she asks.

  “Ideal,” Toby reassures her. “Centre of the pack.” He watches her face soften.

  “A guy your age must be pretty relaxed about all this,” she says.

  A guy my age, thinks Toby, can go days without sleep when necessary, can live off hardtack and water, can bathe his sorry fingers in saline solution.

  Back in the dorm he plunges into a run-through of the new program before supper, setting the alarm to remind himself to eat.

  Later, Toby joins the thinned-out crowd in the cafeteria for supper, selecting a protein-rich soup with no drowsy-making carbs. When he sets his tray down at the communal table, everyone applauds. It’s a nice moment.

  Armand hasn’t made the cut. “They do not like my style — too romantic,” he says, sighing. “Also, maybe I have a small problem with the repeat.” He’s donned a Greek fisherman’s cap and looks pale.

  “What was your free choice?” Toby asks.

  “Third cello suite, first two movements.”

  Bach is dicey, especially the cello suites. Every student plays them, and there are so many transcriptions, all contentious.

  “I was sure I would convince them with my interpretation,” Armand says, but he sounds discouraged.

  The statement cranks everyone into an animated discussion of different versions of the suites. Do you listen to cellists? If so, which bowings do you prefer? No one wants to deal directly with Armand’s disappointment. He is thirty-five years old and has never made it to a competition final. Does he have a family back home? No point in checking for a wedding ring, for his fingers are bare. Think of swimmers with shaved heads, no extra weight, no drag.

  “Bach is supreme king!” Hiro cries and everyone agrees with this indisputable fact. Having made the cut, Hiro is regarded with new interest.

  It turns out that Javier has also made the cut. He’s the silent Argentine who sits at the end of the cluster of tables. Since day one, he’s held himself apart from competition fever and gossip. And there have been rumours about another guy, possibly from Winnipeg, who hides in his room, practising and sleeping, only stealing out after dark for food.

  Texas Larry bites down on a vegetable burger, glancing neither to the left nor the right. Was his name posted? Toby can’t remember.

  “I still can’t believe it.” Lucy pulls her chair next to Toby’s, and he gets a whiff of tea-rose fragrance.

  “Believe what?” he obliges.

  “I’m so amazed and honoured.” She touches his wrist. “Am I shaking? Have I entered a state of delusion? If so, please give me a sharp kick. I need to know.”

  Her head tilts against his shoulder, and he feels the heat of her, the pulsing flank of a small, nervous dog.

  “You made the semis?” he asks.

  She seems hurt: he should know this. “Unless there was a typo.”

  Armand reaches into his pocket and removes a pewter flask. “Next I will enter the Barcelona competition,” he advises the group. “World-class judges, huge audience, such aficionados you can’t believe.” He drinks quickly and wipes his lips. “If you make it in Barcelona, you establish an instant career. You know Stanley Blake?”

  Everyone nods. Of course, they know Stanley, or rather, they know of him.

  “Barcelona, grand prize, 2003.” Armand smiles, point proven, and takes another pull of whisky.

  “Larry ran aground,” Lucy whispers in Toby’s ear.

  Toby swings to face her. “What happened?”

  “He was playing during some breakdown with the ventilation system, and Smyth actually jumped up in the middle of the Loesser first movement to fiddle with the thermostat. So Larry stopped playing, thinking he was meant to — and they wouldn’t let him start over.”

  Toby glances at the Texan, who is peeling the label of a bottle of mineral water.

  “Remember the year Christophe Poulin walked off with the Miami prize?” Armand is getting excited. “In 2001 I was in exactly the same competition.”

  “Who’s Poulin?” Hiro asks. He sits on the edge of his seat, wearing a flaming orange singlet.

  “Nobody! The guy played like shit, but his teacher was related to one of the judges, ja?”

  Toby nods. He is perhaps the only one here who remembers the scandal.

  “At the gala the jury didn’t arrive for two hours,” Armand goes on, becoming even more animated. “Because they were hauled on the rug by the organizers for total incompetence. Everyone knew the best players didn’t make it past round two.”

  Hiro scrambles to his feet and excuses himself. “I run,” he says, and escapes into the night, trotting into the crowded sidewalks in his shorts and singlet.

  The institute is driving Jasper stark raving mad. Toby pretends to listen to the phone rant, but Jasper feels his lover’s patience wear thin.

  “Okay, not mad,” he corrects himself, for it isn’t a word one should toss about. “The institute is a thing of beauty, but Luke must go.”

  “Of course,” Toby agrees with a yawn.

  “He’s brought back an ex-officio president, and the two of them are attempting to hijack the place.” Toby still doesn’t get it: not only is Jasper’s job on the line but the future of the institute. “They’re plotting to get rid of me. It’s a strategic ouster.”

  This snaps Toby to attention. “Can they do that?”

  “Luke is omnipotent.”

  Toby doesn’t believe a word of this, for it is Jasper who is omnipotent.

  With his free hand Jasper throws the boy’s dirty socks into the laundry hamper. Before tossing his jeans into the same pile, he slides an empty box of Smarties from the rear pocket. Not quite empty: a solo red bead sticks to the bott
om. When Toby arrived at the halfway house all those years ago in the middle of winter, he pulled his guitar out of its battered case and launched into the mournful Sarabande while snow melted in his hair. Jasper stood in the doorway holding the discharge file while residents trickled in and out of the room, oblivious to the divine sound that had entered their realm. The boy was achingly thin after his hospital stay, a frail bird waiting for Jasper to rescue him.

  “How do your colleagues sound?” Jasper asks.

  “I avoid listening.”

  “You don’t want to be influenced?”

  “I don’t want to be scared.” Toby gives a crackly laugh.

  “Are you eating well?” Jasper probes.

  “Like a field hand.”

  Jasper feels the boy holding back information. This is not a good sign: his secrets are such a burden to him.

  “I’m perfectly all right,” Mrs. Ivy Cronin assures Jasper. “It was just a nasty bout of the flu.”

  Jasper nods in an encouraging way but says nothing.

  “Monkey flu,” she says. “It jumped species. Don’t you find that interesting?” She stops for a moment to marvel. “I was on a ventilator for ten days, but you know all that.”

  “You’ve had a rough time.”

  “And look at me now,” she says, spreading her arms wide.

  What Jasper sees is a handsome but gaunt woman with coifed hair whose voice, still hoarse from the ventilator tube, is bravely chipper.

  “Let’s start with a few questions,” he says, pen poised over the clipboard. They’re sitting in the lounge area of the institute overlooking the boulevard many floors below.

  Mrs. Cronin hasn’t touched her coffee or the bowl of nuts, but then neither has Jasper. It strikes him that she might have difficulty swallowing, and he makes a mental note to offer yogourt from the staff fridge. Choking disorders aren’t uncommon in these cases. New Age, vaguely Indonesian music, a mistake to his mind, wafts from overhead speakers. Luke cites research on its tranquilizing properties.

  “Ivy, do you know what day of the week it is?”