The Blue Guitar Read online

  Jon spreads his arms. “Because she’s forty-six years old, man!”

  An antiquity, barely clinging to life. Manuel reaches into his coffee cup, retrieves the corpse of the gnat, and flicks it onto the floor. “Is it our business to forecast future performances, or to reward the recital we have just heard?”

  “Come on, Manny,” Portia sighs, reaching under her blouse to give her bra strap a tug. “You’re being philosophical rather than realistic.”

  That word again.

  “I only know what I have heard and seen,” Manuel insists. “Not what I might hear at some point in the future. Who can predict this?”

  Portia comes to the rescue again. She’ll make a fine president of the federation. “Let’s proceed to the next name on the list,” she suggests, peering over a pair of flaming red reading glasses. “We can revisit Lucy Shaker’s case at the end. Agreed?” She fixes her gaze on each judge in turn until she receives a confirming nod.

  “Toby Hausner.” Jean-Paul adjusts his own glasses to read from the list. “Name rings a bell.”

  “Indeed it does,” Portia says. “Do we all recall Paris? Jon was present as a youthful competitor.”

  “Which year?” Jon asks. He entered the Paris competition twice.

  She reminds him.

  He sighs. “Never made it past the preliminary round. Small problem with tone and warped fingerboard.”

  “Toby Hausner made it to the finals.”

  “He did?” Jon seems mystified, then gradually a look of astonishment crosses his face. “Christ! That kid in dreadlocks who scorched through the semis, then came out barefoot for the final?”

  “The very one.”

  “He self-immolated out there. It was a horror.”

  There is a short silence as they digest this sorry tale.

  “He played magnificently today,” Jean-Paul eventually says. “This is an artist I’d pay to see.”

  “Yes, but …” Portia ventures. “Do we dare promote him?”

  “Come on, lads an’ girls, let’s hear it for our courageous driver!” This is Marcus holding forth as he lunges down in the aisle of the rented bus.

  “Rah-rah,” someone says.

  He slaps his hands together. “Who knows a song? C’mon, you lot. I want to hear boisterous singing.”

  The bus brakes sharply, and Marcus tumbles forward, grabbing the back of Trace’s seat for balance. “Fucking shite!” He’s been hammered since being dropped from round one.

  Pine trees spin by on the old highway, a river route following the crevice of a glacier-age gorge. Let the judges deliberate, Toby thinks. You can’t sit on your ass waiting for your future to arrive. Worse, you can’t let your recital haunt you, endlessly replaying the program in your mind, each hiccup going stereo, every misstep and string buzz pressed into memory. “A hundred bottles of beer on the wall!” he roars, and everyone joins in for a verse.

  “Sit down!” the long-suffering driver pleads.

  Acting like a bunch of unruly camp kids, the gang’s on furlough from the competition, trying to pretend it doesn’t exist for a few fragrant hours. Air streams through the open windows, message from the larger world.

  Marcus, the Brit who was expected to ace the first round but didn’t, ignores the driver’s instruction. “What’s our national anthem, mates?” He starts ripping an air guitar version of the opening chords to “London Calling.”

  The rented school bus crests into the final leg of the journey, then drills a sheer downward slope to the launch area next to the riverbank. A picturesque log cabin is set up next to stacks of kayaks, canoes, and rubber rafts.

  The group clambers out, stretching and yawning after the hour-long ride on hard seats.

  “Fuck those,” says Marcus, pointing to the row of kayaks. “Eskimo tippies. I want something with a nice fat arse.”

  “You must wear PFDs, sir,” the youth in charge of rentals insists. “It’s the law.”

  Marcus lifts up one of these objects. “Did the mighty voyageurs wear lifesaving vests? I think not.”

  Lucy and Armand haul the cooler of beer from the bus as the door swooshes shut, and they all watch the rattletrap vehicle take off, due to return in two and a half hours.

  Many competitors elected to stay back in their dorms, continuing to practise, not allowing their precious focus to soften. Toby was like that once, but now he grabs a beer and clambers up on a rock — Champlain discovers the new world. It pours in from all sides, the rolling foothills of the Laurentians, the river curling below, and behind them the highway buzzing with traffic. The universe is a bigger place than an airless room and a guitar.

  Hiro, looking capable in track pants and purple tank top, scrambles down the hillside and lifts the bow of a kayak, testing its weight. Toby leaps off the rock, beer can in hand, and skips after him to the launching area. They could be a normal group of pals on an outdoor lark. Daniel, a francophone guitarist, negotiates with the youth in charge, and soon a pair of kayaks slides into the water, Hiro deftly stepping into one and Trace in the other. The girl lives on an island, so she swings away from shore with an effortless tug of paddle. The rubber raft bobbing dockside is for everyone else. They pick over the stack of orange vests, and Toby pushes his arms through one bulky number, not bothering to fasten the ties. He can almost see Jasper pointing a warning finger. Rolling up the cuffs of his jeans, he steps into the unsteady craft, clambering over the benches toward the bow.

  The gorge is a placid waterway this time of year, long past the unpredictable surges of spring. Armand, followed by a musician from Belgium, then Marcus and Lucy, all settle into the raft, lurching as they find their seats.

  “Who’s in charge here?” Lucy frets.

  “Call me skipper,” says Toby, lifting a wooden paddle. “Cast off!” He takes a final gulp of beer before stashing the can under his seat.

  The craft rocks as Baldo, a Serbian guitarist with shoulder-length hair jumps onboard, cigarette dangling out of his mouth.

  “No smoking!” the Belgian shudders, and the others chime agreement until Baldo is forced to extinguish, shooting the spent cigarette toward shore.

  They’re all wearing ball caps emblazoned with the vanished Montreal Expos team logo — even Lucy, who looks like a kid in her capris and T-shirt. She shrieks with glee as the craft enters the current and picks up pace, cruising down the centre of the river, cliffs rising on both sides.

  Toby paddles like crazy, then remembers that this is no time to mess up a shoulder and eases off. Two kids working a plastic paddleboat chug past, knees cranking, and everyone waves, fellow mariners. Smoke trickles into the sharpness of sky: trash burning on the far side of the hill. There’s something manic in the group’s mood as the raft noodles midstream. They’ve been cooped up too long in small rooms. Marcus finally gets everyone singing sea shanties, and Toby reaches over the side to drag his hand in the current. The water is coated with fine pollen dust, luring dragonflies that dart and hover. Sun bathes his skin, ultraviolet rays be damned, and he feels the tension of the past few days exit his body.

  Hiro adeptly steers his kayak around sandbars and rocks, marking the route ahead. Back in Japan he’s on a rowing team that gets up at the crack of dawn to practise.

  Marcus, despite his extensive knowledge of shanties, turns out never to have set foot in a boat smaller than a car ferry. “Whoah, man, look sharp!” he shouts. “Rock to starboard side.”

  “Port, actually,” Lucy corrects him.

  “Will ya get your paddles out and work now?”

  “I’m skipper,” Toby reminds him, though he didn’t notice the rocky patch and it’s the current that saves them from mishap as it loops around the boulder back into the deeper water.

  Lucy points: is that a hawk soaring over the firs?

  “No, dear, it’s a cormorant,” says Marcus, taking a snort of beer.

  Armand reads aloud from his guidebook, translating from German. “Watch for the narrows. In early spring, high waters
rage through the sudden narrowing of the gorge.” He points a finger upward. “Limestone walls heave as the river surges toward the sharp bend, transforming the placid river into a turbulent froth.” He twists so that he’s looking back at Lucy and Baldo. “You hear this, my friends?”

  “No!” they chorus.

  “A turbulent froth. But —” Armand peers at the page “— this danger disappears by midsummer when the run reverts to being a suitable family activity, ideal for novices and children.” He beams. “So, precious musicians, your search for glory is not in jeopardy, ja?”

  Toby stashes his life jacket under his seat when it starts to bunch under his chin. He’s an ace swimmer, and these are hardly class three rapids. Klaus drove Felix and him to the Y every weekend for lessons and made sure they earned their badges.

  Trace shoots ahead in her kayak, then paddles back to report on what’s in store, making fancy manoeuvres, switching direction on a dime. This time she waves her paddle and shouts mutely into the breeze.

  “She is trying to warn us,” Armand cries, lifting up from his seat to see better. The raft shudders with the abrupt shift in ballast.

  Hiro sets his paddle across the gunnels and makes a gesture with his hands, palms pushing together as if he were playing accordion.

  “Channel narrows,” Lucy interprets. There’s a charge of excitement in her voice.

  “Of course it does,” Armand says. “This is exactly what the guidebook explains.”

  He starts to read aloud again until Toby barks, “Shut up.”

  Trace is back-paddling. Her jaw works as she shouts, words lost in the freshening breeze. Behind her the hawk thing swoops over the treetops and disappears behind the cliff.

  “What do you want us to do, boss?” Baldo asks in that laconic voice that always sounds as if he’s half asleep.

  There is an odd silence, a reprieve, then suddenly everyone calls out in tandem, “Whoah,” as a calamity enters their field of vision.

  The crew lifts out of their seats, hoisting paddles aloft as if fending off a monster. The banks of the gorge rise as the river jackknifes, the placid water now on the boil. Their raft careens toward the flank of bare rock while Lucy cries, “Hold tight!”

  “Paddle backward!” someone yelps.

  Toby stares in horror at the wall slamming toward them. Better to jump, he quickly decides, and catapults into the water while the raft shoots out from beneath him.

  Cry of shock as his chest freezes. River the colour of brine.

  Water is your element, Klaus used to say, but this isn’t the measured metres of the YMCA pool, and Toby feels his body suck deep into the murk. Any moment he’ll pop up like a cork. No one drowns at a guitar competition — the idea is halfway comic. Keep pulling at the water and its skin will break, but it’s taking a long time, so much longer than expected.

  He’ll open the final program with the sonata, classic mood, very controlled and nimble. He can almost taste the audience’s attention as he can taste this brackish water. Not much air left in his lungs, last pocket dialled to empty.

  Jasper will be so sad. He would say, “What kind of nitwit leaps into rapids without a lifejacket?”

  The tug comes hard, a sharp pain. Toby is snagged by his hair, then he’s staring into a pink face under a ball cap.

  “Got him!” Lucy cries, leaning over the rim of the raft, arms strained to the max. Toby feels himself tear through to open air, skimming across water while she heaves him onboard, a massive trout.

  Back on the shore the kid who’s minding the shop keeps walking backward as if he expects the musicians to attack him. He’s talking a mile a minute, not that Toby is counting. He’s too freaking cold, clothes glued to his body, shoes squeaking out aquatic smells and weeds.

  Daniel translates, “The Quebec government in conjunction with the local Indian band has built a dam upstream to control water levels.”

  “Now he tells us,” Marcus says.

  Another cascade of French, then the translation. “You did not listen.” Pause. “The upper river run is closed.” Daniel frowns. “There were three warning signs.” He looks up. “Anyone see those?”

  Lucy creeps up behind Toby and puts her arms around him, and he jerks, as if to be touched were lethal. He’s so cold he could shatter.

  “Put this on,” Lucy says, slipping out of her sweatshirt.

  Toby pokes his chattering arms through the sleeves, then draws the garment over his head. For a second, as darkness closes in again, he panics.

  He emerges to see the rest of the group clustered on the rocks, subdued after his misadventure.

  Baldo flips a butt into the innocent-looking river. Marcus lies on his back, face baking in the sun. Trace swats flies. Where’s Hiro? Is anyone counting heads? There he is, tank top peeled off and hanging on a bush.

  “You gave us one hell of a scare,” Lucy says.

  Marcus lifts his head. “Why did you jump ship, son?”

  “It was a lousy idea,” Toby agrees.

  “I was ready to dive in after you,” Lucy says. She sounds breathless, as if she’d actually performed this heroic act.

  Toby says quietly, “Thank you,” the words she is waiting to hear.

  Trace steps across the rock and crouches next to him, runs her hands up and down his arms, chaffing them back to life. “What was it like going under?” she wants to know, a flare of excitement inflecting the question.

  “Bracing,” he says.

  “Whoah, Nellie.” She grabs his forearm. He was about to keel over.

  A crunching sound signals the arrival of the bus as it steers off the highway onto the gravel shoulder.

  Armand jumps to his feet, waving wildly.

  Sixteen

  Lucy’s twin boys, Charlie and Mike, are planning to get their own place as soon as possible, the only setback being that neither has a job or savings. Mike says that students can apply for welfare. The boys can tell you exactly what their basement apartment will look like: a stack of vinyl records, old-school turntable, handful of clothes stuffed into cardboard boxes, mattresses on the floor — life reduced to its essentials. Maybe a high-def television. A decent set of speakers. Mike wants a dog, a Rottweiler or Doberman. Shame that pit bulls have been banned.

  Lucy was in the kitchen preparing lunch for Mothers of Gifted Children when Mark wandered in, eyes bleary from a long shift guarding art. She was in the midst, recipe book cranked open, julienned vegetables everywhere.

  “Pass the cumin seeds?” she said. “Top shelf.”

  “Hmm?” Mark never heard what she said the first time.

  “Cumin!” she snapped. Then she added, “Please.” She must make an effort.

  Mark obeyed, or tried to, scrutinizing the row of spice jars, twisting them around so he could read the labels. Finally, he handed his wife the jar marked cumin.

  “Uncle Philip will have touched ground by now,” he said, leaning against the fridge door so that she had to ask him to move. “Bunking into some seedy hotel to save money.”

  This conversation took place a week ago.

  “Probably,” agreed Lucy, mixing chili oil into the spices.

  “Not such a bad life,” Mark continued. “Taking off for months at a time. We could do that.”

  Lucy looked up. “How?”

  Mark made a dismissive gesture toward the sprawl of dirty bowls and spatulas. “Just walk away. Take the boys with us, or leave them with my sister.”

  “With Rosemary?” Lucy snorted.

  “Why not?”

  Wild Rosemary, whose own daughter waltzes in and out of rehab? The same Rosemary whose current boyfriend sports a three-inch knife scar on his cheek after a skirmish “inside”?

  She knew that look on Mark’s face: wistful. He was missing who she used to be when they were younger. Well name that tune! She missed herself. She didn’t want to take off for months at a time like a pair of retirees. Her life was just beginning to get interesting. Last night her teacher, Goran, set his hand
on her wrist and said in that smoky voice, “You are surprising me, Lucy. You are surprising yourself.”

  She’d just played her entire program in the conservatory studio. When she was done, he stared at her, those almond eyes filled with actual tears.

  Three hours of practising, wearing a visor in the dorm room because the overhead light hurts his eyes. Toby is still shivering, but he won’t give in to it, no whisky for this boy. They are all waiting to hear who’s made the cut, who will enter the finals. The pod is oddly sombre, the now-famous river catastrophe a sobering reminder that life holds surprises. Toby’s mind wants to go back to the crisis, as minds do, into the dark cold water. Brain scrambles even as his fingers plant firmly on strings and fretboard.

  At 8:00 p.m. Toby drops his competition badge into his pocket, noting that the others don’t. They’re proud of their status. Montreal’s Gazette ran a feature on the congress, calling this gang the cream of the classical guitar world, the upcoming generation. The musicians step into downtown Montreal, aching to be together again. The waiting is a kind of torture: when will the judges make up their bloody minds? A tour bus rambles past, headed toward historic Old Town, its loudspeaker noting features in both official languages.

  Hiro points to a sign over a café door: les copains.

  Toby nods. Sure, he’ll go anywhere. The musicians enter the bistro and hover in the vestibule, waiting to be noticed. Everyone in the joint is earnestly talking while dance music blasts out of a cut-rate sound system.

  “We better scram, Junior,” Larry says, digging him in the ribs.

  “Why?” Toby asks. The place looks perfect, very Left Bank, elegant young men propped up against the bar, soft lighting, pressed tin ceiling — this is why people travel.

  “Fag bar, you dumb Canuck.”

  This is how they end up in a faux-Irish dive called Brasserie Molly Bloom, full of French-speaking students perfectly at home with posters of early-twentieth-century Dublin, cobblestone streets greased with rain and soot. They find a pair of empty tables at the rear of the cavernous bar and push them together.