The Blue Guitar Read online

  “Don’t say anything that will cause her to worry,” Klaus would warn, as if she were a teacup full to the brim and the slightest movement might cause a spill.

  Klaus would hover while the boys brushed their teeth, satisfied only when they spat blood into the sink. “Not hard enough” was his mantra. He’d fix his eyes on Karen as she glided aimlessly from room to room, and when she stayed in the bathroom too long, he’d knock on the door and ask: “Everything okay in there?”

  She began to leave oracular messages written in lipstick on her mirror, an idea picked up from movies.

  Fools’ names and fools’ faces

  Always appear in public places.

  Worry crackled through their days like summer lightning. Sometimes Klaus left the house and the boys were put in charge of their mother, who usually stayed upstairs watching sitcoms while shelling ballpark peanuts, leaving termite hills of debris. Toby can still hum along to the theme songs of the decade. His mother had a true, sweet voice, and until she got sick she joined the singalong Messiah with the symphony every Christmas. She had the ears of a bat and could hear a spoon tap a glass clear across the room, then tell you the note hit was C sharp.

  Toby was well into his punk phase, plaid pants tucked into combat boots, when their lives changed forever. He and Felix came home from school that Monday afternoon, and their father was already waiting in the kitchen. That was unusual. As a science teacher, he usually stayed late to give his students extra help.

  “Your mother isn’t here,” Klaus said.

  Felix idly picked a plum off the plate and began to eat it.

  “She’s moved to a facility where she’ll be well taken care of.” Klaus waited for them to say something, and when the boys just stared, he continued, “We’re lucky to find such a wonderful place.” He kept nodding, as if he was trying to convince himself that what he was saying was true.

  The brothers pounced. Whose idea was this? Did Mama really want to leave them?

  Klaus raised his hands, palms up. “What did you expect me to do?”

  Felix sped off to his karate class, while Toby fled to his room, to his guitar. That was the year Felix got suspended for taking a knife to school.

  It took Toby a full week to screw up the courage to visit his mother at Lakeview Terrace. What was she doing with all these old people using walkers and wheelchairs? She sat on the edge of her bed, wearing her beautiful black-and-red silk kimono, looking as if she wasn’t sure what she was going to do next. When she saw him, her face lit up. She felt tiny in his embrace, and he shuddered, feeling her rib cage press against his. He’d rescue her, spirit her off, he thought, but after a moment she pushed him away.

  “Don’t worry, old bean,” she said. “I’ll soon get used to it here.”

  Then it came. “Soon get used to it here,” she repeated in the same sunny tone.

  Don’t do that, he wanted to plead. He was certain it was repetition that had landed her here, and if she could just quit, the whole business would settle down.

  She tousled his spiky hair. “You’ll come and see me often, won’t you?”

  “Of course, Mama.” And he meant to.

  The old lady in the next bed turned over and farted.

  “That’s Mrs. Creeley,” his mother said. “Used to teach piano. You must talk to her one day, being a fellow musician.”

  Toby stared in horror at the hump under bedclothes, the tufts of white hair.

  “A fellow musician,” his mother added dreamily, patting him on the knee.

  She was the only one who liked his punk getups, being partial to costumes herself, hence the silk kimono.

  Seven

  The virus has gone into hiding. No new cases since last week. The city unfolds in sections like an origami crane, and the restaurants and concert halls fill with cautious, then celebratory patrons.

  Competition departure day looms, and Toby is restless as a cat. He imagines himself stepping onto the Montreal stage an hour before showtime for an acoustic check. He hears himself run through sections of his program, listening to notes bounce off empty seats and bare walls, then imagines how it will sound later, with an audience soaking up the music. Ears funnel in sound and dampen it, dermal upholstery.

  Guitar Choir is in a tizzy of excitement. Toby has just broken the news that he will miss next week’s session due to the competition. Pamela bombards him with questions: “What will you play? Are you nervous? Will you come back to us?” She looks cranky; she doesn’t like being the last to know things.

  The prospect of slinking back here without having made even the semifinals is so appalling that Toby tells himself that no matter what happens, he will not, cannot, return to his old life. He can hardly bear to look at them, feeling he’s already betrayed their loyalty.

  Denise says, “We’re rooting for you,” and Toby catches the pensive look on her face. Maybe she’s guessed what he’s thinking.

  Matthew, polishing his instrument with a special chamois, says wistfully, “Will it be folly or will it be grace?”

  Is he quoting someone, or just himself?

  Tristan offers, in his circumspect way, “To pray, if you think it will help.”

  As they flock to the door and watch him head down the street, Toby understands that he is entering a world they can only dream of.

  A day later Toby wheels his suitcase down the front steps of the townhouse, swinging his guitar over one shoulder, then pauses to look back at Jasper who stands in the doorway in his dressing gown. The streetlights are still burning off morning fog, and a feral cat mooches through the garbage.

  Toby stares at the rumpled face of his lover who is making a big effort not to appear worried. Jasper seems almost old in this light, skin beginning to slacken at the chin despite a rigorous diet and exercise routine. This is the man who saved him, sorted him out.

  “Got your toothbrush?” asks Jasper. It’s a joke. He’s mocking his own fussy nature.

  Toby sets his luggage down and moves back to the stoop where he captures Jasper in a hug. As their bodies mesh, he feels the tick-tock of heart against heart, impossible to tell whose is whose.

  “I’ll be thinking of you,” Jasper whispers in his ear.

  “Of course you will.”

  But will Toby be thinking of Jasper? If luck holds — no, for it is crucial that he maintain focus on performance. With perfect timing the cab draws up, thanks to Jasper’s reminder call placed fifteen minutes ago.

  As Toby picks up his luggage and climbs into the taxi, Jasper can’t help saying, “I’ve got to level with you. I don’t think this adventure is wise.”

  Toby pretends not to hear. They’ve been through this a dozen times.

  Jasper tiptoes up to the open window. “You’re really staying in a dormitory?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Because you’re an adult and adults don’t stay in dormitories. You require a decent mattress, peace and quiet, good linen — all amenities lacking in such premises.”

  “What you require,” Toby points out.

  Jasper isn’t in a mood to be corrected. He passes through the open window a boxed lunch he’d prepared the night before. “Healthier than the dreck they serve in trains.”

  As the vehicle pulls away, Jasper shrinks from sight in the rearview mirror. Not that Toby notices, for his eyes are already set on the road ahead. It is Jasper who watches himself disappear, a clenched figure in a blue dressing gown, waving.

  Eight

  Another damn leak in the plumbing. Nothing works in this godforsaken house. Manuel Juerta, a semi-patriot until three months ago, curses the decaying faucet, then the entire crumbling country that it is his misfortune to live in. He’s been jettisoned by his wife from their perfectly serviceable house — to this piece of shit with no view of the Malecón He twists the ancient faucet, and a dribble of water appears at last — un milagro! — indoor plumbing, the latest invention. He splashes his furry face, brushes his teeth, then waits with cruel patience u
ntil his glass fills with water, then embarks on the morning gargling routine, making plenty of noise, since Lucia isn’t here to object. It’s still early, judging by the sharp light latticing through the blind. He can hear the usual cacophony of vendors selling their wares, bicycles grinding past on the pavement, and the occasional diesel-spewing camella, the so-called camel bus that takes state workers to their jobs.

  The steady rhythmic thump on the other side of the apartment wall is Señora Pineda, pumping her treadle sewing machine for her off-the-books tailoring business that she operates when she isn’t teaching English.

  Manuel Juerta is not always in such a foul mood. He’s generally thought to be an ebullient fellow, one of the lucky ones, which he was until recently. He spits into the corroded sink. The air reeks of mould in this cramped bachelor’s box on the edge of downtown.

  Visa trouble.

  Sometimes a man’s whole existence comes down to two miserable words, one gut-churning phrase. His current difficulty is apparently due to a quartet of nationally trained gymnasts on tour in western Canada who hopped off their trapeze into the waiting arms of the local do-gooders: welcome to the land of opportunity and bottomless stew pots. Manuel grabs his briefcase, courtesy gift from that stint as guitar competition judge in Caracas. Such a generous professor couple hosting his stay, room with attached bathroom, a local woman cooking mounds of food, much of which would get tossed to the dog at the end of the evening. He’d even played for them, a short solo recital, Ponce and then Rodrigo, the great blind composer from Valencia.

  Best of both worlds is what Manuel inhabited until three months ago. He’d return home, when he was still permitted to live in his real home, after recitals or teaching and judging duties, with his pockets crammed full of dollars, ready to convert them into the national CULs, and a suitcase bursting with clothes, toiletries, electronic gizmos, which Lucia and her avaricious sisters would dive into the moment he entered the house. Within an hour the black market lines would be humming.

  All this appears to be in the past tense. Manuel blames the gymnasts for the immediate difficulty, but as he tears through the flat, packing sheet music into his briefcase, he knows there’s more to it, this visa denial. He pours the last of the raisin bran into a bowl and eats quickly. Even his modest addiction to this breakfast cereal won’t continue. And he’s out of milk, an irritating situation, given the fact that Lucia’s fridge will be stuffed with dairy products and will remain icy cold, since she keeps the appliance plugged in day or night with no heed to energy conservation — thank her resort-working nephew Eric for this — and it doesn’t hurt that her parents are inner circle, and that Gabi, their youngest daughter, is now receptionist at the city’s swankiest hotel. They don’t check her pockets when she leaves work — not a daughter of Lucia and Manuel Juerta.

  The conservatorio is his second home — maybe his first home now. It’s located at the north end of Avenida Simón Bolivar in a once-stunning colonial building, now propped with wooden beams at significant junctures so it won’t collapse and kill them all. Today he arrives, ducking cyclists on the road outside, waving a beleaguered hi to Teresa, who stands guard against nothing every day, grabs a bun from Leticia, the girl with the red apron, nods at the gang in the office who labour over an ancient computer, then strides through the still-elegant courtyard surrounded by classrooms from which the usual sound salad emits: fiddles and horns and strings and the rat-a-tat of drums. He loved all this when he could leave at will to embark on his international adventures, then return bestowing gifts of strings and metronomes to his grateful students. They would soak up his stories of the world outside their island, his hobnobbing with the greats.

  Lucia, never God’s gift to men, has decided that Manuel is evil incarnate, and she seeks to destroy him. This is not hyperbole.

  He kicks open the door of room 117 at the back of the building. His office is bright and relatively well furnished with a desk and chair, floor-to-ceiling bookcases full of imported sheet music and texts, along with multiple copies of his own opus, Guitarra clásica: un método completo, which still seeks an English translator.

  The first student of the day knocks cautiously on the door, and Manuel roars “Enter” in English. He was brushing up on the language last night when he received the catastrophic news that he was not only denied entrance into Canada but would not be allowed to leave his own country.

  Alberto steps in, a slight fellow with a long nose, aristocratic brow, and excellent teeth. Manuel thinks a lot about teeth these days, since his right cuspid was pulled a month ago and his dentist informed him there were no false teeth to be found until some vague date in the future. He might as well get used to a gap-toothed smile. Better not to smile at all.

  His student clears his throat. “Mama tells me I should switch to clarinet so I can play in the National Touring Orchestra.”

  Sensible boy.

  “Tell your mama she’s quite right. The orchestra will offer thirty weeks employment per year with extra rations. Do you own a clarinet, son?”

  The boy perks up. He was expecting a rant. “My uncle will lend me his.”

  Manuel opens his hands, palms up. “Then any difficulty is solved. You will master the clarinet in no time. It’s like the guitar. You must play through the breath.”

  The boy frowns. He hasn’t thought of it this way. Only thirteen years old, he is one of Manuel’s most talented students, son of one of Lucia’s cronies.

  Manuel’s expression changes from avuncular to stormy. Surely, she hasn’t meddled in his business here. But he can imagine it all too well — his wife and Alberto’s mother meeting at the café, Lucia planting the idea of switching to clarinet, of a plausible career for Alberto with steady employment, meanwhile she sips one of those deadly espressos.

  “Can I sell my guitar?” Alberto asks in a small voice. He has been instructed to ask this question.

  “Leave the task with me, son.”

  The boy backs out of the office, relieved.

  Manuel stares at the wall, at the peeling poster of Picasso’s morose painting of The Old Guitarist. A cadaverous figure with huge hands, soaked in blue, plays some chord unknown to man. Terrible wrist position, Manuel notes, not for the first time. This is his future if he’s not allowed to leave.

  The government says no dice, high risk of defection. Idiots. If he wanted to defect he would have charged off years ago, in Paris or Madrid or Cologne or Winnipeg, or any one of the other cities that have made him their honoured guest. Do they really think he wants to burrow into that cold country for the rest of his time on earth?

  He drops onto the office chair and sinks his head into his hands. The days ahead will be pissed away working telephones and chasing bureaucrats: pure misery.

  Manuel finally gets through to the Montreal festival organizer, a pleasant woman who speaks English with a Québécois accent. She is appalled by the government’s irrational decision. “We need you here, Maestro,” she says. She’ll make some calls. His flight doesn’t leave for ten days? Then there is still time.

  “Lucia.” Manuel stands at the doorway of what used to be his home. The old iron lantern hanging outside hasn’t worked for years, but a warm glow issues from within the building. He smells grilled chicken. Lucia always finds meat.

  “What do you want?” his wife asks as she blocks the way in.

  He forces himself to match her tone. “Do you know why they aren’t letting me leave?”

  “How should I know such things?”

  “Because you know everything that goes on here.”

  She gives him a steady look. “You believe it’s all my fault?”

  “They’ve denied me an exit visa.”

  “I’m sorry.” There’s grey in her hair, a broadening white streak that she flips back with one hand.

  “If I can’t travel to festivals and concerts, then I can’t earn my living.” He peers over her head at the black-and-white television screen blaring one of the state’s three ch
annels. Where is Gabi? He hardly sees his daughter these days, between her fancy new job and the boyfriend. They used to play duets together, he on guitar and she on flute. His wife starts to close the door, but he sticks out his hand and stops her.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” he pleads.

  She tosses her hair again. “Perhaps they think you won’t return.”

  “I always come home.”

  “Yes, but —”

  “Nothing is different, Lucia.”

  “We are different, Manuel.”

  He feels heat flood his face. “Our separation has nothing to do with my profession.”

  She shrugs. “Perhaps it’s easier now for you to leave us.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  She says nothing.

  “Have you been putting ideas in the heads of certain employees of the state?” he asks.

  “Why should they listen to me?”

  She always does this, answers a question with another question.

  “I have no life without my connection to the musical world,” he says, staring into a face so familiar that he could map out each crease and freckle by heart. She’s changed in twenty-two years, become leaner, and those violet-flecked eyes seem duller. Life wears them all down, even the privileged few.

  “My parents are coming over soon,” she says.

  Manuel takes a step backward and nearly falls down the stone staircase. Lucia smiles, and he can’t help himself. He smiles, too. It’s no secret that her parents believe he’s Lucia’s big mistake. She even reaches out a hand to rescue him, and they touch, her skin still soft after all these years.

  No, that’s a lie. Her skin is rough and dry, like his.

  A baby giggles in the arms of a passing girl. The street is lively this time of the evening, last of the workers coming home, some toting packages, many with nothing. A few old-timers hang out on the sea wall drinking rum from bottles in paper bags. There is music, of course, but not the kind tourists crave, no picturesque ancients singing son or strumming homemade guitars: this is Mexican pop music blasting from someone’s radio. Señora Castilla, who lives in the flat next door, comes out with her watering can to freshen up her window boxes. Seeing Manuel and Lucia, she waters quickly and hurriedly withdraws. She is a sensitive woman, a teacher of post-colonial studies at the university.