Spring 1960

Uf dem anger (On the green)

Ned stood on the sidewalk in front of the cigar and candy store that served as this hick burg's bus station, staring at his swaying reflection in the display window. He needed coffee. He needed a hair of the dog. But until he got his balance, he wasn't going anywhere to get either: relief would have to come to him.

The night before had been a disaster. He had given a recital under the scoreboard in a high school gym for a crowd of exactly nine people. Two were teachers, who applauded desperately almost every time he stopped singing. There was also an American nuclear family — Mom, Dad, Buddy and Sis — sitting dead center in the first row, close enough to see him sweat. The remaining three were the accompanist, her sister, who turned pages, and the school janitor, who stood under the opposite backboard leaning on a pushbroom.

The nuclear family never looked up from the single mimeographed sheet each clutched and studied like a menu, which outlined Ned's programme. Ned carried the stencil for this programme in his music case, along with scores, pencils, and staff paper, and the first place he visited when he arrived to give a recital was the school or college office that had a machine. Ever thereafter he could not open his mouth to sing without getting a whiff of ditto fumes.

At the intermission, the teachers swooped towards him, but he managed to fight them off at the door of the Visitors' Locker Room, and retreated into its cool, tangy depths. In his music case he also carried a flask, to which he rarely resorted on the day of a recital and never during a performance — it tended to dry out the cords — but this was an emergency. Even now he only gargled the scotch and spit it into a toilet, which he then flushed four or five times.

After pacing up and down the long aisles and snooping in a few lockers, he went back up the stairs to peek into the auditorium. The janitor was folding up the last row of chairs, and stacking them on a dolly. There was no one else in the place. As Ned was about to go downstairs for a real snort, one of the teachers ran in from the hall and charged the janitor, shrieking, "Stop! Stop! What are you doing? The concert isn't over!"

The janitor blinked once and then began to set up chairs again. The teacher came over to the locker room door and began to apologize to Ned — he wished Ned hadn't seen that, he was mortified there wasn't an audience, there'd been a mixup with the publicity, on and on.

Ned said it was all right, it was the music that mattered, not how many came to hear it, a standard line from the canon of condescending bullshit he'd learned to sling to the provincials long ago.

The poor little man thanked him for being so understanding, and said they'd be ready to go in two minutes, if that was all right with Ned. Anytime was all right with Ned, the sooner the better, in fact.

The teacher backed away, almost bowing, and collided with the janitor, who wanted to know how many chairs he had to set back up. The teacher reddened, and Ned discreetly closed the locker room door.

The nuclear family did not return after the intermission. When Ned emerged from the locker room, the two teachers leaped up and applauded furiously. The janitor was again standing sentry with his pushbroom beneath the far backboard. When Ned raised his eyebrows at the two teachers, they sank nervously into their chairs. He then turned to the accompanist, whose eyes widened as if he'd pulled a gun on her.

"What's the matter?" Ned said softly. "Nothing!" she said, in a voice so high it could have been a cat's.

Ned smiled at her, trying to pour reassurance and confidence into her with his eyes. She flinched, then her chin crumpled up. She was going to cry. He looked away quickly, back at the teachers, who eyed him like prisoners before a firing squad. He burst out laughing.

"I'm willing to bet," he said, "that no one here has been this embarrassed all week."

The teachers looked at each other, the accompanist covered her face with her hands.

"I think we should quit while we're ahead, and go have a drink." He then marched straight for the front row, calling back to the janitor, "Wanna give me a hand here?" and began to fold up chairs.

He didn't remember much of what happened after that. The janitor had declined Ned's invitation for a drink, saying his wife was pissed off enough that he had to work late with no warning at all. The rest went with him to the hotel bar, where Ned kept them goggle-eyed with gossip about the famous and near famous — with whom he rubbed shoulders all the time in the big city — until the bartender had to close up the place. He vaguely recalled a proposal to continue the party at the teachers' apartment but there was also something in there about feeling up the accompanist's sister, of falling, possibly down some stairs, of floating face-up through a long corridor, overshadowed by strange, straining faces.

He'd been awakened by the phone ringing in his hotel room. It was his agent calling from New York. Well, not exactly his agent, he didn't have one, but the agent who'd booked this whistle-stop tour of the hinterlands for some other baritone, who'd gotten sick at the last minute.

The agent was apologetic. "I'm sorry to wake you up, Mr. Baer, but I had to catch you before you left."

Ned's eyes wouldn't open, and the bed was shuddering like a car with a bad clutch. "Catch me?" was all he could manage.

"I'm afraid I have bad news. Ralph Burton wishes to resume the tour." Ralph Burton was the baritone Ned was attempting to replace. "He's anxious about the money, you see."

"Oh," Ned said, as if he was doing this only for the love of his art, and the money, not to mention the exposure, meant absolutely nothing to him.

"Mr. Burton will be ready to take over from you on Sunday, so your next engagement — ah, let's see... yes, Meade College in Sayersville — will be your last. You're due there this afternoon, yes?"

"Uh... I guess so."

"If you wish to return immediately, Mr. Burton has offered to cancel his doctor's appointment and voice lesson, but it would be better... if..."

"No, that's all right, I'll do the gig. I'd rather not have last night be my swan song."

"Why, did anything go wrong?"

Ned thought about telling him, decided against it. "No, I didn't mean —"

"I understand. It would be an anticlimax. You'd like to go out knowing you're going out."

"Something like that."

"Very well. Mr. Burton will be pleased. He asked me to tell you how much he appreciates your taking this on at such short notice."

Ned grimaced. Right, he thought. Cocksucker doesn't even know my name. Natalie would be happy, naturally. They'd had a horrendous fight the night before he left, hadn't spoken since. In fact, it wasn't clear he'd be welcome back at home, whenever he finally got there.

She was right to be mad, of course she was: being stuck with the kids all day was no fun — though it could be entertaining — even when they traded off, and now with Ned gone she'd get no break at all. To make matters worse, there was no money to pay a baby-sitter so she could go out and earn enough money to pay a baby-sitter — an impossible situation.

But Ned couldn't stop the flood of guilty relief he felt the instant the door slammed behind him and he knew he was headed out, away from there, away from what had never really had a chance to be a home because they were always scrambling, there was always some emergency they didn't have the money or the time or the energy to cope with.

But that wasn't his problem just at the moment, and though he felt bad for Natalie he was also glad he wouldn't have to deal with her for a few days yet.

She'd always been kind of desperate, wanted things fiercely, wanted him that way once upon a time — a real turn-on at first, but after years and years of that intensity beating against him day in day out, he needed a break like this, if only to let the anger boil off for once, let the dust settle, get a fresh start....

So here he was, swaying and blinking before a shabby storefront in some jerkwater town in the middle of fucking nowhere, cut off at the knees, but still expected to wow the yokels before he stumped off into the sunset halfway through the second act. God, he needed a drink! But he couldn't — or could he? Did he have to sing tonight? Couldn't remember, had to sit down somewhere, this sunshine was cooking his brain like an egg. He looked up and down the street. Absolutely nothing happening. He looked across to the other side. Not a thing moved. All the shops were closed, their blinds drawn. He was pretty sure it was Wednesday, but the place was as quiet as Wall Street on a Sunday morning.

For one awful moment he thought he might be having a dream, one of those terrible ghost town sequences out of Ingmar Bergman or Fellini. He wanted to run, but was afraid he'd round a corner and trip over a coffin with his own body in it.

When he looked back at the store window, an evil-looking woman was beckoning him inside. It was all he could do to shake his head. The woman disappeared, and as if on cue he broke a sick sweat. This reassured him a little, because he'd never had a hangover in a dream before. He had to sit down and remember what the hell he was doing here. He put his suitcase down and perched on it. Somewhere in his music case was his itinerary. Also his flask, which he'd had the foresight to refill at the hotel bar last night. For some reason this reminded him of reaching for the page turner's breast, getting his finger caught in her necklace, a shower of pearls, a blow on his ear, vertigo, then down the stairs like a crate, end over end.

"Rye stan jupp hun?" Ned whirled around so hard the suitcase teetered and fell flat beneath him, the music case flipped out of his hands, and the flask skidded across the sidewalk. The evil-looking woman was leaning in the doorway, snapping a wad of gum the size of a golf ball. She raised one eyebrow at the flask at her feet, then looked at Ned again. He staggered up to more or less a standing position.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Dint mean ta scare ya, hun. Did yer ride stand ya up?" She pushed off the doorframe and helped Ned collect his scattered music. "You that singer doin' a show up the colge tonight?"

"Uh, yes."

"Oh, well that explains it. Perfesser Hartwiger called and said fer you ta wait, he'd pick ya up after his doctor's appointment."

And his voice lesson? Ned wondered.

"He'll be here soon. Bring yer grip inside, I'll make ya cuppa coffee." She went back to the door, stepping over the flask as if it wasn't there. "Need a hand?"

"No, I got 'em, thanks." He jammed the flask into his jacket.

"Name's Esther, by the way." She held the door for him, and Ned squeezed past.

"How do you do, Esther, I'm Ned Baer."

"Just park it at the counter. Black OK? The milk's turned."

"That'll be fine. Beggars can't be choosers."

"That's right, hun. Won't be a sec." She went through a curtain into a back room.

Ned hadn't been in a place like this in years, since high school, maybe earlier. His grandfather used to take him and his brother Mickey "down street" when they were kids to just such an old cigar and candy store. While Pop-pop shot the breeze with Mr. Sherman, the boys would gaze and gaze at the tall glass jars of candy on the counter. Sometimes Sherman's wife Maybelle was there, and Pop-pop would flirt with her solemnly, telling Sherman he was the luckiest son of a bitch in the world, to have such a magnificent woman stuck on him, for no good reason Pop-pop could see.

As he sat twenty years later breathing in the smell of good tobacco and old wood polish, it occurred to Ned that there was a story there somewhere, deep in the past, before he or perhaps even his father was born. This unbidden thought was so odd that he felt sure he was right: there had once been something between his grandfather and Maybelle Sherman, something maybe even tragic, that they, or at any rate Pop-pop, had never completely gotten over.

He stared at his reflection in the wavy glass of the tobacco case behind the counter. He saw his grandfather's face in his own. God, he thought. When my boy Brendan has his own son, and I take the little bugger down street for some candy, what sad secret story from my past is he going to have a vision of twenty years later? Breaking the page turner's pearl necklace?

It was a good joke, but it didn't dispel his haunted mood. What did it matter what his grandfather felt for Maybelle Sherman? They were all dead now, Mom-mom and Pop-pop, Dad and Mom. He didn't know about the Shermans, but he expected they were dead as well. Or would be soon. For that matter, so would he, and everyone he knew, and everyone they knew. The only things that outlived people were the stories about them, and after a while those died too. The curtain was batted aside, and Esther came back, stirring a mug of coffee. When she put it in front of him, Ned said, "Your husband is a lucky man."

She regarded him coolly. "You flirtin' with me or sump'm?"

Ned sipped at his second cup of coffee, feeling a little better now. Esther had warmed to him sufficiently to tell him about the last real excitement they'd had in this boring little town: a near riot at the Phi Delta Theta house a month ago, when townies had crashed a keg party to rescue somebody's sister.

The bells above the door suddenly jangled so fiercely it made Ned's teeth sing, and in burst a small man in a light suit and tie, a straw fedora on his head. He marched straight up to Ned, shook hands, and introduced himself as Johannes Hartwiger. Ned lurched off the counter stool, feeling huge as an elephant in the tiny room, and stooped to pick up his luggage as Esther tried to finish her story. Hartwiger remonstrated with her for trying to give Ned the wrong impression of their ideal little community, and hustled Ned out to his car with Esther's half amused protests cascading out the door after them.

He drove Ned to the Marshall Sayers Inn, a beautiful old stone building which overlooked the town square. Ned was very pleased: this was definitely several cuts above the fleabag of the night before. But Hartwiger told him to leave his things in the car.

"You're staying with me," the little man said. "We have much to talk about. But first you must be fed, and this establishment has the best sauerbraten in the country. You like sauerbraten?"

"I've never had it."

"A nice Teutonic boy with the name of Baer has never had sauerbraten? Impossible. Your life is incomplete. Kommen Sie." Ned almost had to trot to keep up with him.

A plaque beside the door said 1752. The front was plain dark fieldstone, dotted with small windows. The opening for the double front door had clearly once been twice the breadth and half again as tall as it was now: the portal had been filled in with much lighter stone to accommodate the incongruous factory-made glass and aluminum affair Hartwiger was now jerking open with difficulty. Ned looked back over the parking lot and thought he detected the subtle curve of a carriage drive under its blanket of asphalt.

Hartwiger was holding the door for him. "Apr&eacu;z vous, Herr Doktor," he said with a little bow.

"Oh! Sorry, just admiring the architecture," Ned said as he scurried inside.

"What of it remains." Hartwiger followed briskly, taking Ned's arm. "The tourist brochure claims this is the oldest building in the town."

"I believe it."

"I do not. The owner of this hostel is chairman of the committee which puts out the brochure."

"Ah," Ned said. "Politics."

"Man is a political animal, nicht wahr? We endure such shamelessness for the sake of the common weal. The owner is also a trustee of the college."

"Ah," Ned said. And they both said, "Politics."

Hartwiger steered Ned through the lobby and into a short corridor, which turned abruptly left. This hallway ended in an exterior door with a panic bar on it, but at this door Hartwiger stopped, faced left again, and pressed against the wainscoting of what looked like a blank wall. There was a click, and the wall swung back to reveal a gorgeous little club room which must have been directly behind the front desk.

"The sanctum sanctorum," Hartwiger said, mock-solemn. "For the owner's very special guests. Please sit." He motioned to a small table by the bay window which took up the entire right hand wall. "I am one such very special guest. The owner's sister played a passable pianoforte. I married her, once upon a time."

"Ah," Ned said, beginning to wonder if he could say anything else.

They sat down, and Ned looked out the window. There were two asphalt tennis courts, surrounded by a high cyclone fence. Running parallel to the near fence were two long concrete strips for shuffleboard. To Ned's right, against the building by the exterior door, stood a row of overflowing trash cans; to his left was a square of plain lawn with a wrought iron table and two benches. The entire compound was enclosed by a thick hedge at least twelve feet high.

"Once the view from here was somewhat more spectacular. This pathetic little playground was a rose garden of considerable splendor. Beyond that was a park for riding on horses and other leisurely pastimes. The park ran down to the river we will cross on our way to the campus. All that land was owned by my wife's father, whose son, unfortunately, had to sell most of it to keep this place from failing, during the Depression. You remember the Depression?"

"Not very well. I was just a kid."

"Just so. The children only survived the Depression. The parents it killed off. Even the ones it left alive." Hartwiger stared for a moment, then looked brightly at Ned. "Old times, always sad. Best in the dust left behind." Across the room, a different section of wall opened inward. "Ah! Now we eat."

A waiter in a long apron swung around the open door with a large tray. He smiled warmly at Hartwiger, nodded to Ned. They spoke briefly in German, of which Ned understood every other word. Something about beloved son, cruel father and eventual revenge. When the waiter had put a plate and a mug of dark beer before each of them, he bowed out, taking the tray with him.

Hartwiger picked up his silver, pointed with his knife at Ned's plate. "Eat. Your whole life you have been waiting for such a meal."

To Ned it just looked like roast beef and gravy, with a slab of potato pancake as the only concession to the ethnicity of the cuisine. Then he noticed that the gravy was studded with what looked like tiny gobs of dough. He speared one on a tine of his fork.

"Späzli," Hartwiger said with his mouth full. "Little dumplings. Delicious."

Ned popped it into his mouth. Gob of dough, he thought. But then the taste of the gravy hit his salivary glands. Mmm. He cut off a corner of beef and stirred it in the gravy. He hardly had to chew, it was so tender, and the gravy's tang was strong enough he felt it in the back of his nose. This was marvelous! He hunched over the plate, completely forgetting the beer he'd been eyeing with such longing a moment before.

They said nothing while Ned finished what was on his plate. When he had smeared the last drop of gravy on the last wedge of potato pancake and swallowed it, he had an urge to pick up the plate and literally lick it clean. Then he remembered the beer, and took a huge gulp. As he set the mug down he looked at Hartwiger, whose small smile showed he had been watching Ned for some time. "You see?" he said. "The cells of your body are now singing for joy, are they not?"

Ned laughed. "That was fantastic. What — ?"

"Secret formula. Do not try at home, unless your wife too is German. Would you like the rest of mine?"

Hartwiger had only eaten half of his meal. Ned shook his head. "I couldn't."

"Yes you could, and another whole portion besides. Please. A healthy appetite is one of life's blessings." He scraped the contents of his plate onto Ned's. "And you are a large man. I am small. Always I am too much given."

Ned tried to protest, but Hartwiger raised his hand. "You eat. I will tell you now what happens today. At four o'clock there is a meeting of my voice students, who have prepared a little recital for your critique. Then you may take a nap, unless you wish to have dinner in the cafeteria."

"I could live off this meal for the rest of my life."

"Just so. Seven-thirty is rehearsal for the Carmina Burana. Afterwards, perhaps, we can talk."

"May I ask who's doing the soprano solo?"

"The wife of the president of the college."

"Ah," Ned said, and they both smiled.

"You may also finish my beer," Hartwiger said, refilling Ned's empty mug from his own. "I daresay you will need it."

Ned made no protest this time.

Cour de musiques (Court of music)

The voice class recital was not nearly as bad as Ned had expected. The young quartet of two men and two women were obviously well prepared. Their diction was precise, their tone production passable and well supported, their phrasing and dynamics quite subtle in places, and all four sang with address. Of course there wasn't much music in anything they did, and only one, the soprano, had a real voice, but they had clearly been coached by a master. Hartwiger himself accompanied them with panache, if not total accuracy. Ned was completely charmed.

When each finished, Ned led the applause, then made a brief comment, always beginning with what he felt the student had done well before offering any suggestions for improvement. He looked around. Their eyes were shining, even Hartwiger's. He'd said nothing profound, but he'd gotten quite worked up, surprised himself by the passion with which he made some of his pronouncements. At the end, the class, led by Hartwiger, gave him a standing ovation.

Hartwiger thanked Ned for coming and sharing with them his expertise and inspiring them with his dedication to his art. He then reminded his singers to be on time for the rehearsal that evening, and that Ned was giving a lecture-demonstration the following morning at ten in the chapel. Then he dismissed the class. The students filed out, each stopping to thank Ned personally. When their excited chattering at last died away outside, Hartwiger looked up from his gradebook and regarded Ned for a moment. Ned felt his ears begin to warm.

"Are they always so… appreciative?" he asked finally.

Hartwiger lowered his eyes, smiled slightly. "No. Hardly ever. It's the novelty, you see. That and the aura of — shall we say, celebrity — that surrounds you as a professional who lives and moves and has his being… out there, in what they imagine is the real world."

Ned deflated. "Did I do something wrong?"

Hartwiger's ironic expression collapsed. "I'm sorry, Mr. Baer. What a petty thing to say. I bite the hand that feeds me."

"I don't understand."

"You have supplied my students with enough inspiration to last until the end of the term. I am perhaps envious that you did it so easily. However, you may be sure I will milk it to the last drop."

Ned laughed, but Hartwiger's tone still made him uneasy.

"Shall I show you to your quarters? You must be tired, and would like a nap."

"Actually, I'm not tired at all."

They walked toward the door. "Yes, I understand. Always after I have been brilliant in class I feel the same excitement. It is the teacher's bread and butter." The irony was still there, but Ned wasn't sure who the target was, Hartwiger or himself. "You must be a teacher as well as a performer, Mr. Baer, am I right?"

"Uh, yes. That is, until this tour came up."

Hartwiger locked the door. "I am disingenuous. Julius Patterson called to tell me you were coming."

"You know Patterson?"

"We were classmates at your very alma mater. We became friends of a sort." He held the door for Ned and they walked through the chapel. It was getting dark outside, and the still air in the sanctuary was beginning to turn blue. "We have exchanged letters from time to time since parting at graduation."

"Which was when?"

"About the year you were born, I would think. 1930."

"Right on the nose."

"Julius accompanied my senior recital."

"Really? Mine too!"

Hartwiger nodded. "He always played well, for a singer. A point of pride for him. And we were quite close, at the time. But it was not a pleasant experience for either of us." He laughed. "Such children — what stars we thought we were! He wanted to play everything too fast to show off his dexterity. I wanted to dwell on every phrase, to show off my breath control. We compromised, which is not quite the same thing as finding the right tempo."

Their pace had slowed as they walked up the aisle. Now Hartwiger stopped beside the last pew, gazed around. "The chapel is lovely when it is empty, I find. Particularly at this hour. Outside, the world is so bright and noisy, night and day. There is a quiet here, a peace, that is more deep than the middle of the night when you cannot sleep."

Ned looked at him. That same skeptical smile was on his lips, and his eyes shone. Is he going to cry? Ned wondered. Something's up with this guy.

Just then the door banged open, and the tenor from the voice class rushed across the back aisle, almost running Ned down before he saw him. He pulled up with a gasp, nearly dropping his books. Then he saw Hartwiger.

"Oh! Sorry I'm late, Dr. Hartwiger," he panted. "I had to — I had to run back to the dorm to get — to get something."

"You were smooching with your girlfriend, you mean. It is all right. Mr. Baer and I were admiring the peace and quiet of the chapel at dusk."

"Oh." The kid looked confused.

"You did very well today, for a tenor."

The kid grinned, looked at Ned, who nodded his agreement. "That was a great class, Mr. Baer. I can't wait to hear you sing tonight."

"To see if I practice what I preach. Well, you're entitled."

"No, I didn't mean — "

Hartwiger interrupted. "Go play that infernal machine. The entire campus is waiting."

"Right. Sorry." The kid shifted his books and ran for the stairs to the gallery.

"As I was saying, peace and quiet."

Ned was gazing at the stairs. "He plays the carillon?"

"Yes. As you see, not the most reliable person. In the old days there were monks who dedicated their lives to such a service. To him it's just a job that he half of the time forgets."

"It pays for his voice lessons?"

"Yes."

"I did that once."

"So did I." The tower bells began banging away. Hartwiger was looking at him. "Shall we go?" he said.

They drove to Hartwiger's house to drop off Ned's things. Hartwiger offered him a drink, but Ned declined, saying the two beers would tide him over. Ned was shown his room, then Hartwiger disappeared while Ned washed up.

There was still an hour and a half before rehearsal, and once he was alone, Ned began to feel very tired. He lay down for a moment, knowing it was a mistake, and almost immediately he found himself in the bell tower of the conservatory chapel, feverishly working the handles of the carillon. For some reason the apparatus was twice its normal size, and he had to hang on the levers with his full weight to pull them down. And they kept getting stuck, so the hymn he was trying to play got slower and slower. The tune was breaking up into individual notes, and the rich texture of reverberation thinned out, so that eventually the sound of each bell died alone before Ned could get the next one to ring, and a wedge of silence began to drive deeper into the melody. It pierced the roof of the tower and descended like a shadow over the bells, so that now the only sound was Ned's breathing and the squeak and thud of the levers, which suddenly worked with ease. Ned yanked on them frantically, but the angle of shadow sank inexorably down the well, devouring the catwalk and ladder as it had the bells. When it was just above him, Ned squeezed between two of the levers into the machinery which connected them to the bells and cowered there. The shadow stopped, its point aimed right at his head. He opened his mouth but in his terror could make no sound. Then something mechanical in his own body kicked in, and his terror became alertness. He was standing now, his eyes hard-focused on the gleaming point of the shadow of silence, lips closed but teeth parted. He sniffed sharply, raising his upper palate, and pulled in breath all the way down to the small of his back. He clenched his buttocks, drew his shoulders down. Then he opened his mouth to sing. His jaw cracked like a popped knuckle and he woke up.

He blinked at the ceiling, trying to get his eyes to focus. Then he sat up. The dream still swam vigorously in his chest, so he got off the bed and walked around, breathing deeply.

He heard Hartwiger calling to him from somewhere below. He went out into the hallway and stood at the top of the stairs.

"I beg your pardon?"

Hartwiger appeared at the bottom. "You would like to warm up, no doubt. Whenever you are ready, we can return to the chapel."

"Gimme two seconds." He went back into the room, threw on his jacket, picked up his music case. Before he left he fluffed the pillow and straightened the coverlet on the bed. Destroying the evidence, he thought to himself.

Carmina Burana is a full length work for orchestra and chorus (with soprano, countertenor and baritone soli) by Carl Orff — after Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer, which was not Orff's fault. The baritone part is a honey, but Ned was somewhat underprepared, never having performed the whole thing in public. It was a good thing that his first number, Omnia sol temperat, was one that he already knew. It had the additional benefit of being in his mid-range, the creamiest part of his voice and the easiest to warm up. It was the next solo, the Estuans interius, that really had him worried. He knew he'd need a week to get his mouth around all those Latin syllables. But of course he didn't have a week.

In the oratory, Ned was just beginning to work the phlegm out of the apparatus when people began trickling in. Hartwiger tried to keep them out, but was soon pulled out into a conference with the conductor Dr. Jannings, and in a moment the oratory became a bustle of comings and goings, whispering and furtive glances, and finally a clot of voice students just sitting there and staring at him. Ned's concentration completely broke, and he slammed the lid down on the keyboard and stormed out.

The mayhem in the chapel itself was even more prodigious. Ned started toward Hartwiger, who was arguing in German with Jannings. As Ned approached, Hartwiger drew him into the controversy, which oddly enough was about the tempo of the Estuans interius. Jannings thought it should be presto possible while Hartwiger wanted it allegro ma non troppo, so that the words could be understood. Jannings gave an exasperated "Hah!" and said that was ridiculous, no one understood the words anyway. Hartwiger replied mildly that given the musicians on hand, presto possible wouldn't get much past andante anyway, so what was the problem? Jannings shook his finger in Hartwiger's face. "You are so smart? You conduct!" And he stomped to the back of the chapel, where he sat with his arms crossed, breathing hard. Hartwiger looked at Ned ruefully. "A brilliant violinist. Occasional soloist with the Vienna Philharmonic between the wars. He is long past his prime, but still he has the temperament of a great artist. I must go and make up."

"Wait," Ned said. "Let me try." He walked back to Jannings, an awkward grin on his face. "I'm Ned Baer, sir, and I am honored to meet you. I heard about you often from my teachers at the conservatory."

Jannings looked startled. Ned ploughed ahead. "In fact I was just coming over to ask if we could take the Estuans a little down-tempo, just for the rehearsal? I'm still somewhat insecure about it, and I don't want to waste everyone's time."

Jannings was nodding thoughtfully, then looked up and smiled. "Of course, my boy," he said, patting Ned's hand. "I had not considered your predicament. You may tell Dr. Hartwiger that I will conduct. He will be relieved."

"Thank you, sir. I appreciate — "

"Not," Jannings said, getting to his feet. "We artists, we must be flexible, nicht wahr? Always we are asked to do the impossible, so we help each other when we can." He took Ned's elbow as they walked back toward the stage.

"Did you know Dr. Hartwiger before you came here?" Ned asked.

"No. Hartwiger is Bavarian, I am Viennese. A world of difference." He did not elaborate.

Ned stood in the middle of the chapel and watched. It was like a slow-motion explosion in reverse. The confusion began to coagulate into pockets of purposeful activity, which then expanded and merged until there were only two, the orchestra on the chancel floor, the chorus on risers behind them.

Hartwiger and Jannings stood beside the podium, on speaking terms once again. With them was a gawky young man Ned's age or younger, who had combed all his thick wavy hair to one side, so that he looked as if he were wearing a loaf of dark bread on his head at a rakish angle. He had big teeth and smiled all the time, wiggling his long fingers at his sides. Ned guessed he must be the keyboard professor, and sure enough he soon sat down at the piano and began playing runs. Hartwiger backed away from Jannings, nodding emphatically, then came down off the stage. He stopped in front of Ned and gave a little sigh, raising his eyebrows. "Shall I introduce you?"

Ned suddenly realized that the little man was nervous. He's worried about impressing me, he thought, and was so disconcerted by this idea that he almost laughed out loud. Luckily, Hartwiger had already turned away and started toward the stage. Ned jumped up and followed him.

Jannings nodded and then nonchalantly began to study his score, and Hartwiger stood next to the podium and simply looked at everyone, smiling, until the group fell silent.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to begin. It is my great privilege to introduce to you our guest soloist for this concert, Mr. Ned Baer."

The applause was immediate, and a few of the voice students whistled and pumped their fists in the air. Jannings glared sharply at them, but Hartwiger winked at them behind Jannings' back. Then he went to the first pew and sat down.

Jannings turned to Ned. "I, too, am very pleased to have you with us, Mr. Baer, particularly on such short notice." Great, Ned thought, make sure they know I'm a ringer for the real star. But he smiled and returned Jannings' bow.

Jannings abruptly raised his baton. Hartwiger motioned and patted the seat beside him. With as much dignity as he could manage in the sudden silence, Ned crept down to the front pew. Jannings looked at him, annoyed at the interruption, then nodded regally and turned back, raising his baton again. Just as Ned sat down, the tympani thundered, the cymbals crashed, and the opening chorus O fortuna exploded into life. Ned opened his score to follow along.

After the introductory fortissimo section, the group had trouble. They'd get started all right, but at the second line the chorus came in early. Jannings stopped, started again. The same thing happened. Jannings snapped, "Chorus, you must count!" and smacked his score with the baton. "Once more." This time no one came in at all. "Stop!" Jannings shouted. "Chorus! Have you not seen this piece of music before? What is the problem?!"

Hartwiger was squirming beside Ned. "You are the problem, Herr Doktor Jannings," he muttered. Ned could see what he meant. The chorus could not decipher Jannings' conducting, which was full of energy and expression, but not very precise.

Ned leaned over to Hartwiger. "He's not landing his beats," he said, and Hartwiger nodded.

"If they do not get it right this time, Jannings will leave."

"Perhaps not a bad idea?" Ned ventured.

Hartwiger looked at him, mock-horrified. "That would never do, my friend. He is chairman of music."

"Ah," Ned said.

"Besides, what makes you think I can do any better?"

"At least the chorus would be able to follow you."

"And the orchestra would not. No no. Better this way."

In the meantime, while Jannings continued his tantrum, the pianist had been signalling the chorus to watch him for their entrance. Enough of them got the message and passed the word along so that the next time they got through to the end of the piece without further mishap. The following two choruses went better, and then it was time for Ned's first solo.

Jannings motioned for the chorus to sit, then looked around at Ned. "If you please, Mr. Baer?" Ned climbed the three steps to his spot. "Tomorrow night, chorus, you will not sit. And we will go right on from Veris leta to the Omnia without pause. Please mark your scores."

The piece begins with four high pings by the violins, like the tick of time. Ned took Jannings' cutoff as his cue to breathe, then sang his first note. A beat later Jannings brought the orchestra in, pianissimo, on a shimmering, slightly dissonant chord that holds unchanging underneath the first four lines. Ned imagined the chord as the nearly smooth surface of a pond, and that he was drawing small curves, his voice a languid finger trailing through the water, over and over. At the end of the first quatrain the chord shifts slightly, and the vocal line rises a little, but not much, and after four lines settles back on the starting note. This pattern repeats for two more verses, with no variation except for the words.

The first verse tells how, when the sun tempers all things (omnia sol temperat), making the world new in springtime, the mind of man quickens with love. In the second verse, solemn spring commands us to rejoice, but also to keep to the paths of custom — to be constant and faithful in love. The third verse at last reveals the speaker, who is watching the world renew itself while far away from his beloved, whom he begs to be true to him. The last two lines were Ned's favorites: Quisquis amat taliter/ volvitur in rota — "Whoever loves thus (has it this bad)/ turns on the wheel (i.e., is tortured)." But there's a nifty resonance to this last line: volvitur means "he turns" (revolves), but also "he turns over in his mind" (contemplates). Rota means "wheel," but also "alternation," "fickleness." Beyond that is the echo of the opening chorus O fortuna, where fortune is described as a wheel which, in turning, raises man up only to dash him down again. And so the poem is the meditation of a man who is caught on the wheel and knows it.

In the first two verses Ned's voice was smooth and calm, in keeping with the mood of melancholy abstraction communicated by the words. But he also sang with restraint, keeping his feelings in check. In the third verse he allowed his voice to become a little more urgent, and on the very last line he slowed down and landed on each syllable slightly, mixing in a little darker tone, to end the song with a hint of bitterness. And he held the last note out, fading slowly away to nothing. There followed the same four high notes that introduced each verse, and finally, a single note on the bassoon, very low, dark, and quiet.

Jannings cut them off and turned to Ned. As one the orchestra and chorus rose and gave Ned an ovation, which startled him. He looked down at Hartwiger, who was wiping his eyes. Jannings kept nodding at him with a smile of approval. The musicians tapped their music stands or waved their bows, some nodding as well. The chorus, particularly the voice students, were looking at him with frank awe. Ned could only smile and bow.

Jannings turned back, the applause died, and the musicians sat down. Ned started to leave the stage. "Mr. Baer," said Jannings, still looking at the score. "Tomorrow night we will not stop for this well-deserved ovation after the Omnia. However, you will know what is in our hearts."

"Of course. Thank you."

"Now!" Jannings barked, raising his hands. "The Ecce gratum will follow immediately. Let us pick it up six measures from the end of the Omnia. Six measures from the end." The four high notes sounded again, followed by the low bassoon. Jannings cut them off, gave the upbeat, and the joyous Ecce gratum began.

Ned rejoined Hartwiger in the front pew. Hartwiger took Ned's hand and shook it firmly. "I can tell you nothing that you do not know, " he whispered. "But your singing of that song moved me very much."

"Thank you," Ned said, then suddenly remembered that he had a lot of cramming to do in the time between now and his next solo.

Hartwiger took him to the oratory, said he would come back just before it was time, and left, closing the door. Ned began pacing, muttering the words to the Estuans in rhythm.

But after a quarter hour of intense repetition he'd only managed to make it three times through without mistakes, and not once without think-pauses. He was just starting to really panic when the oratory door opened. Shit, he thought, I haven't even sung the damn thing all the way through yet. But it wasn't Hartwiger come to retrieve him. It was a small, somewhat plump woman of forty or so, who didn't notice him as she rushed into the room, flung her wrap at a chair and headed straight for the piano.

When she did see Ned she gasped. "Oh! Dr. Jannings said this room would be free. Aren't you supposed to be onstage?"

Ned stuttered, "N-n-not at the moment, I — "

"Are they taking a break? I heard them playing when I came in. You should be out there. Are you stealing something, is that what you're doing in here?"

"No, I — "

"Or are you just late? Go tell Dr. Jannings I will be in here when he needs me. Go on!" She made shooing motions with her hands. Ned scurried out.

"And close the door!" — which Ned did. Once out in the hall, Ned realized he'd left his score inside. He knew he should just march back in, tell her who he was, and send her out into the hall. But he couldn't do that, not after his ignominious retreat. Besides, he was amused. The little diva had showed up an hour late and had immediately started issuing orders. He thought about asking Hartwiger if he could be the one to come fetch her for her first solo, just to stretch out the quid pro quo a little longer.

As Ned heard her begin to squeak out her first vocalise through the closed oratory door, the door from the chapel opened. Hartwiger raised his eyebrows when he saw Ned standing there, then cocked his head as he heard the soprano's voice crack from within the oratory. He smiled. "Things are going not much better out there. I believe Jannings will take a break before the Estuans. I came to warn you, but I see you have been evicted."

Ned explained what had happened. "She chased me out before I could get my score."

Hartwiger nodded, smiling. "Permit me to retrieve it for you. Shall I tell her whom she has had the arrogance to chase out of her oratory? I think not. Soon enough Frau Doktor Professor President Yardley will discover her faux pas, and you should have the satisfaction of seeing the look upon her face when she does. I will return directly." He knocked on the door, motioning Ned to stay out of sight.

"Who is it?" The voice was imperious and exasperated.

Hartwiger stuck his head in the door. "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Yardley, I left my score — "

"Well, hurry up." Hartwiger slipped in and reappeared momentarily. "I am very sorry," he said. "You will not be interrupted again."

"That's all right, just close the door."

"I will. And, since I may not get the opportunity later, I would like to wish you the very best of luck on your performance."

"Thank you, Dr. Hartwiger. I will do my best."

"You always do."

"Thank you again. Now, may I…?"

"Of course. I apologize." He tiptoed toward Ned, one hand over his mouth.

"Dr. Hartwiger!" He stuck his head back in. "Yes?"

"The door?"

"Oh! Sorry. Of course. Sorry." He closed the door as slowly as he could. Then he grabbed Ned's arm and led him into the chapel, grinning mischievously. "I cannot tell you how pleased with myself I am," he said.

Jannings had indeed called a break. A table had been set up on the floor to one side of the chancel, and a clot of people were milling around it, talking, sipping coffee, and blocking access to those who'd gotten there later than they had. Hartwiger went off to share the joke with the pianist, while Jannings remained on the podium, appearing to study his score.

Ned was dying for a cup of coffee, but on his way he was intercepted by the young tenor who played the carillon. "Mr. Baer, can I ask your advice on something?"

"Sure."

"I'm doing the Olim lacus, you know, the countertenor solo? and I don't know whether to woof it or croon it. It's so dang high, " the kid said, widening his eyes jokingly.

Ned smiled. "What does Dr. Hartwiger say?"

"He's no help. I ask him how I should sing it and he says ‘As well as possible.' I don't think he likes me."

"Haven't you worked on it in your lessons?"

"There hasn't been time. He just told me I was doing it last week, and I don't have a lesson till tomorrow."

"What do you mean, he just told you last week?"

"Some other guy was going to do it, but he backed out at the last minute."

"What other guy?"

"I don't know, some muckdemuck big-city type, but he got sick or something."

Ned realized now what had happened. Ralph Burton had planned to hog all the male solos, including the one for countertenor, really blow the rubes out of their seats, fucking show-off.

"Mr. Baer?"

"Sorry, uh — sorry, tell me your name again?"

"Eddie. Eddie Jones." He held out his hand.

"Eddie." Ned shook hands with him. The kid's was clammy, and Ned could feel the quiver of nervousness in his body. "I'll, uh, have a word with Dr. Hartwiger. He's got a lot on his mind."

Hartwiger was, in fact, giving notes to the chorus at that moment. "Maybe if there's time tomorrow I can work with you a little."

"Really?"

"Sure. I sing a little countertenor myself once in a while," he couldn't resist adding, though he wondered why he felt the need to impress this scrawny kid.

"What about tonight? I mean, it's the second song after the break." And the first one is the Estuans, Ned thought. And the one after it the Ego sum abbas, which he hadn't even looked at yet. "Uh, tonight?"

"How should I sing it tonight?"

Ned put his hand on Eddie's shoulder and said solemnly, "As well as possible."

The kid rolled his eyes. "Thanks a lot."

Ned cocked a finger at him. "Tomorrow," he said, and pulled the trigger. The kid clutched his heart and staggered away. Ned shook his head and finally made it to the coffee urn. It was empty, of course, or nearly so. He was just tipping it to get the last dregs when Jannings yelled, "Estuans interius!"

The urn slipped and broke Ned's cup and saucer with a crash. He righted it, then tried to sop up the puddle of sludge on the table. Everyone was staring at him, he knew it, but somehow he couldn't turn around yet.

"If you please, Mr. Baer, we are ready," Jannings said mildly.

Ned made an elaborate show of surprise and hustled comically to his place, provoking a few titters. Jannings had raised his hands and was about to give the upbeat when Ned realized he'd left his score on the table by the coffee urn. He saw to his horror that the spreading pool of spilled coffee had already seeped under one of the corners. If he didn't get it now it would be completely soaked. Jannings' baton came down, the cymbal crashed, the drum rolled, and strings galloped into the introduction.

There was nothing else to do. Ned stepped down off the stage, retrieved his score, and began brushing coffee off the wet corner. A few of the musicians faltered as they caught his movement out of the corner of their eye, and Jannings looked up sharply at them. But Ned came in right on cue and sang the whole first verse from the floor beside the table. Jannings glanced briefly to the side but kept going, and the piece soon righted itself. When the first verse was over Ned came back up the steps, made a face at the chorus, and resumed his place. The rest of the piece went without major incident, though he did have to make up a few Latin words and at one point forgot to breathe and so had to break a phrase in the middle where it made no sense. At the end he blew out his cheeks in relief, and the chorus laughed and applauded. Jannings scowled and snapped "Next!"

It was the kid Eddie's turn, and he bumped his way down through the chorus and orchestra to stand beside Ned. The Olim lacus colueram is a weird little number, "The Lament of the Roasted Swan." Ned supposed it was just the medieval sense of humor, as a rule pretty coarse and occasionally grim, as here. The composer's being German — and therefore, Ned believed, also not noted for the light touch in the humor department — had caused him to set the text in the alto range, presumably to indicate that the poor narrator of the song had lost part of his anatomy in the process of being dressed for dinner. Ha, ha.

Eddie had apparently decided to woof it out, full voice, without resorting to falsetto. This would have been a chore for Richard Tucker, but the kid managed to reach every note except the high C in the last line of each verse, when his voice cracked horribly. There was a lot of grinning and elbowing among the boys in the choir, while Eddie sweated and strained his way through the piece, and even the stonefaced Jannings winced a couple times. At the end Eddie looked hopelessly at Ned, who mouthed "Later," and smiled as encouragingly as he could. Eddie, looking daunted, resumed his place in the tenor section.

Ned had to pretty much sight-read the Ego sum abbas which followed, so it didn't have a lot in terms of grace or conviction, but he got all the notes right at least. He simply had to mark it on the high g-flats at the end, but no one seemed bothered, and Jannings went directly on to the next piece, the bouncy male chorus In taberna quando sumus, "When we're in the tavern we don't give a damn about the grave," etc. It goes on and on like "99 Bottles of Beer in the Wall," getting wilder and wilder until the end, when the boys just shout "Io! Io! Io! Io!" (whatever that meant) over and over, louder and louder.

Jannings called another short break before the third and final movement of the Carmina. At last, Ned thought, fetch me that soprano. Hartwiger had disappeared, and in a moment the lady in question came through the opened door like the star she considered herself to be. Hartwiger trotted in behind, smirking like a teenaged boy, and ushered her up onto the stage. Jannings shook her hand gravely and gestured toward the seat beside Ned, who rose to receive her. She looked at him, smiling prettily, and blinked. Ah, thought Ned.

Hartwiger gently took her elbow, but she disengaged herself and marched straight over, hand extended. "Mr. Burton, I am so honored to meet you. I have several of your recordings at home. I had no idea you were so young."

"I'm not — " Ned began, then broke off. He stole a glance at Hartwiger, who could only shrug. Ned took her hand dumbly.

"You must tell me your secret for preserving your youthful appearance. Are you ready for our love chase? I am." Her head was cocked to one side and she blinked again.

My God, she's flirting with me! Ned realized. She either doesn't recognize me or never even looked at me back there in the oratory. Or doesn't care! The face of the woman!

There was the slightest flicker in her eyes, but her smile stayed as pretty as ever. Ned had to cover. "Ah, yes, the love chase. I guess I'm as ready as I'll ever be." He knew it was lame, but soon saw that his clumsy response was exactly the thing. She was so pleased at having put Ned off-balance that she positively glowed. Against his will Ned found himself admiring that pretty smile and those delighted eyes, and for a moment forgot that he had yet to have his revenge on this little prima donna.

Jannings was beginning again. The final movement began with Amor volat undique, a brief chorus followed by a pretty soprano solo.

Mrs. Yardley's voice was on the small side, and had a burr in it as if she weren't quite warmed up or — also possible — was a little past her prime, but the vibrato was trim and quick without being too fast, and her pitch was flawless. True, she sang too much for the size of the instrument, scooping every once in a while and changing dynamics dramatically, but she was a pro, there was no mistaking it. Then and there Ned decided that singing well was the best revenge, and resolved to give her a run for her money.

This he could do on the next number, Dies, nox et omnia, which he knew well. It's a lover's plea to his mistress, which tries to melt her icy heart. He mixed in more than a little acting, addressing the last verse directly to her, begging her to bring him back to life with just one kiss.

When he finished she was flushed, but her eyes accepted Ned's challenge, and she responded pertly with the Stetit puella — "There stood a young maiden in a red tunic; if anyone touched it, the tunic rustled. Eia, eia — Heigh ho, heigh ho. There stood a young maiden like a little rose; her face shining, her mouth like a blossom. O my, O my." The first refrain she sang in a slightly mocking tone, as if daring Ned to make a move. But the second she floated like a kite in the pure air above the grimy, sweating world.

Ned was ravished, but this played right into his next song, Circa mea pectora, in which the manly lover declares himself passionately, backed up by men's chorus. Unfortunately he had to read this one from the score, so he couldn't fix burning eyes on her as often as he would have wished. But he put into his voice every ounce of virility he could muster, imagining that he was pushing her down upon a bed of lush moss.

When he finished he looked at her with slightly hooded eyes, and noticed with satisfaction that she was breathing a little fast. Then they sat down together as one. He felt the choir watching them.

Except for a couple of solo lines a little later on, he was done, and the rest of the show was basically hers. He didn't listen to the next two choruses, just sat there feeling her arm next to his. He started to get up with her for her next solo, then pretended he was just shifting in his seat, and flipped the page in his score with studied nonchalance.

But she broke him. She sang the In trutina — in which the maiden wavers between chastity and lascivus amor — so sweetly and helplessly that his eyes welled up. And when she looked right at him and sang, "Sed eligo quod video" — "I choose what I see," he had to blink, and two tears rolled down his cheeks. When she saw this her voice wavered for a moment, but she looked out into the house and finished the song very nicely indeed.

They were near the end, Tempus est iuocundum, where the soprano and baritone take turns "circling" each other with the encouragement of the chorus. Mrs. Yardley held out her hand, and Ned took it and stood, completely docile. But he soon got into the romping rhythm, swaying back and forth as if actually doing the country dance the piece resembled.

There follows one of the most startling pieces in the modern repertoire, the Dulcissime, a solo of just half a dozen measures, which begins with a jump to a high b on the first word, which means "sweetest boy," leaps even higher, then floats downward on a sighing "ah" to the final words totam tibi subdo me — "I give myself entirely to you." It would be hard to mistake what happens in this song. Mrs. Yardley's high d was a little smoky, and she came down a bit too fast, but Ned couldn't blame her if she was saving something for the performance.

Finally came the halt-step, solemnly joyous Blanziflor et Helena, the wedding procession of the now formally united lovers. There was nothing more to sing, but Ned and Mrs. Yardley remained standing, still holding hands, until the last phrase, which is left up in the air, only to come crashing down with the reprise of O fortuna, the ironic conclusion of the cycle.

They sat down and let the opening phrase wash over them, like the dark tide of death which returns in the end to cover every life, every love, every endeavor. Ned's composure broke completely. This had happened to him once before, and so even as the bottom fell out from under his self-control, he kept a hold on the handle of the door back to normality, with its persistent anxiety and pathetic little pleasures. He knew no one could live here, in this ecstasy of complete joy and utter sorrow. But he desperately needed a reminder that it still existed, and that he could get there. Every cell of his body felt gorged, and suddenly he remembered the queer text of an anthem he'd once sung in school:

The stars shone in their watches, and were glad;
He called them and they said, "Here we are!"
They shone with gladness for Him who made them.

That's how he felt, shining with gladness. The phrase was a secret message he could take back to the world. And having found it, he knew it was time to return. He wiped his eyes and sat back in his chair.

His arm brushed against Mrs. Yardley's, and he felt her jump slightly. He looked up at her to apologize, and found her staring at him. She put her hand on his arm and squeezed. He smiled and looked down at the score in his lap. The avid look he'd seen in her eyes scared him badly.

Behind them the O fortuna had shifted into its insistent stalking tempo, quiet at first but building in intensity. But something was going wrong. The chorus was outrunning the orchestra, and soon they were a beat out of synch. Ned looked past Mrs. Yardley, frowning, at Jannings, who was shaking his head and flailing more emphatically. But the chorus would not be curbed, and broke into the subito forte section three beats ahead of the orchestra. Jannings dropped his arms and just stood there with his head down. The orchestra petered out first, then the chorus, except for the tenors, who kept on shouting at the top of their lungs until they suddenly realized they were alone and stopped, faces reddening.

"I appreciate your enthusiasm, chorus, but it is easier for the orchestra to follow me, who stands before them, than to follow you, who stand behind," Jannings said with barely contained rage. "Throughout this rehearsal you have consistently revised my tempo. I know you would rather have Dr. Hartwiger as your conductor, and perhaps you should. Would you like that?"

Ned turned around sharply and caught Eddie's eye. Eddie jumped as if he'd been pinched, then squeaked, "No sir. We'll get it. We just got carried away."

Ned knew that Mrs. Yardley was trying to get him to look at her, and he had to break free. He stood up. "May I make a suggestion to the chorus?" He looked at Hartwiger, who nodded warily. "I always speed up when I'm singing staccato, because there's a tendency to stop the breath between notes. But when you stop the breath you're not doing anything, so there's no way to tell how long that space of time is between each of the notes. Keep the breath flowing, just stop the voice, and try to make the rest the exact same length as the note." He turned to Hartwiger again. "Is that OK?" Hartwiger nodded again with a shrug.

"Very well," Jannings said. "You have heard the expert. Shall we try again?" He raised his arms. "From the beginning."

Ned sat down. Mrs. Yardley put her hand on his arm again. There was no escape. "That's a wonderful idea. I'll have to remember it."

Ned smiled uncomfortably. "Just a tactic. Sometimes it works."

She started to reply, but the cymbals crashed and the piece started again. She cringed theatrically, and when the loud intro was over leaned in and whispered, "We don't need to stay for this."

Ned's heart thumped. "Uh," he began, "I'd like to hear how they do." There was a trace of alcohol on her breath, and for some reason this worried him more than anything else. She made a tight little smile, and sat back in her chair.

Ned pretended to be listening intently. Maybe if he danced around long enough, acting as if he'd missed that frankly sexual look she'd given him a moment ago, she'd lose heart and give up. But somehow he knew better — she understood exactly what he was doing and why — and his pretense of indifference would only make her more determined. She'd conquered him once, musically, and that was a lot harder to do than what she seemed intent on now.

The O fortuna was going smoothly, if mechanically. The chorus reached the final unison and held it while the orchestra closed in for the kill on the last few measures. Jannings cut them off and everyone started talking at once. Mrs. Yardley cocked an eye at Ned as if to say, "Satisfied? Can we get on with this?" Ned nodded as if very pleased and started to get up. She held him down. "After the rehearsal," she began, breathing in his face, but Hartwiger bounded up to them just in time.

"Thank you, Mr. Baer, that was exactly the solution," he said, trying to get between them.

Ned stood abruptly. "I don't like to butt in like that, but I thought maybe that cheap trick would — of course I should have said something to you first, I heard it happening the first time, and I was going to speak up then but then I forgot and — " he was babbling, trying to edge behind Hartwiger.

Just as he'd feared, Mrs. Yardley was emboldened by Ned's resistance. She took Hartwiger firmly by the arm and said, "Dr. Jannings seems to be waiting for you," and using Hartwiger as a pivot, swung around him to Ned's side.

Jannings was indeed waiting, and scowling to boot. Hartwiger gave Ned "Sorry, I tried" look, then ventured lamely, "You must have some notes to give the chorus?"

Ned's reflexes weren't quick enough. He said, "No, they'll be fine," before he saw the opening Hartwiger was trying to give him.

"Good," said Mrs. Yardley, taking Ned's arm now and steering him away from Hartwiger. "I want to tell you, Mr. Burton, how beautifully you sang — "

"I'm not — "

" — in detail. I also wondered if you would be willing to coach me a little bit. You have so many good ideas."

"I, uh, the schedule — "

"I know Dr. Hartwiger must have you booked solid for tomorrow, but what about tonight? It's still early, for grownups like ourselves."

God, she's good, Ned thought. Completely out of my league. She practically had him pinned against the pulpit, and he knew if the cavalry didn't come soon he'd lose his will to resist. She's a handsome woman, understands music all the way down, a little broad in the beam, but that just means there's more of her —

What am I doing!? She's the fucking president's wife! No, said the wiseguy voice in his head, she's the fucking wife of the president, and you're about to become the direct object of that attributive participle. He laughed out loud.

Again her eyes flickered just the slightest bit, and Ned jumped in. "You seem to think I'm someone else. My name is Baer, not Burton. Ralph Burton got sick and I took over the tour. I'm his replacement, a second-stringer." She backed off perceptibly, but Ned could see it was only to consider whether this new information made any difference to her. Given the undeniable electricity that had sparked between them just a short time ago, he knew it might not. He had to push this slight advantage while he had the chance. "I'm sorry about the mixup in the oratory. I was cramming for my next solo. You see, I haven't had much time to prepare, being called in at the last minute like this. You were perfectly in the right, but you scared me out of there so fast I forgot my score, and Dr. Hartwiger had to go fetch it for me."

He watched the dismay dawn in her face. She hadn't recognized him. Good, Ned thought. That'll keep her busy while I make my escape. Yet he hesitated, and almost stayed to hear the flustered apology he saw her hastily composing in her mind. But then he realized she'd do it so prettily she'd trip him up again. So he quickly drove in the last nail. "But you're a real pro, it didn't hurt your execution a bit. Tomorrow night I'll warm up elsewhere." He then walked directly away, saying over his shoulder, "It'll be a pleasure singing with you again."

He went straight to the podium and jumped into the conference of the three music professors. Hartwiger, seeing that Ned was safe for the moment, left the group to speak to the choir. Mr. Francis, the keyboard man, introduced himself and praised Ned's performance. Jannings asked if the tempo for the Estuans was not a little too sedate? Ned made a show of thinking about it, then said, "I think you're right. It's hard to drive the song if it's not fast enough. I think I can handle it, but thank you for letting me grope my way through tonight." Jannings smiled.

Ned caught a flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye, then saw Mrs. Yardley rush across the stage, hand to her mouth, eyes full of tears. She wobbled a little going down the steps, then rushed out the side door to the oratory. The three men looked at Hartwiger, who raised his eyebrows and then went out after her. Francis and Jannings looked at each other, then at Ned. He pretended to look baffled. "Maybe I said something wrong?"

Francis looked down, Jannings smiled uncomfortably. "Always she does this, sometimes just before a performance. She will need to be mollified, reassured that she is still a great artiste."

"At any rate," Francis said, "Johannes will bring her around. He's a wizard with your basic diva type, particularly with Jean. Last year when — "

Jannings walked away. Francis looked a little shamefaced. "I shouldn't gossip. Not that good a story anyway." Then he smiled at Ned impishly. "This one's a lot better. I wish I could've seen her throw you out of the oratory. What, did she think you were a student or something?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe Johannes can find out. Anyway, best of luck tomorrow night. You sound terrific." He shook hands with Ned, then headed back toward the piano.

Eddie materialized in front of Ned. "Pretty terrible, huh? I better do it falsetto, don't you think?" Ned looked at him, trying to figure out what he was talking about. Eddie's face fell. "Well, maybe tomorrow. I'm sorry to bother you."

Ned touched his shoulder as he was turning away. "Wait a minute. I'm sorry, I was thinking about something else. Uh," he walked Eddie over to the piano. Francis was practicing a run. "Can we borrow the piano for a second?"

Francis jumped up, grabbed his score off the rack. "Sure! I'm done anyway. Go ahead." He gave his toothy smile and left.

Ned sat down. "What's the top of your tenor range?"

"C or c-sharp above middle-C. Falsetto I can do a g or a-flat above that."

"Still a second soprano, that's good."

"It's not real pretty up that high."

"Doesn't have to be, it's just got to be there. Now the reason you cracked on those high c's is that you tried to get at them from underneath. You have to come down on them, easy, like a bird landing on a wire. Listen. Here's you." Ned did a perfect imitation of Eddie's voice breaking on a high note.

Eddie laughed. "That bad, huh?"

"You know it was. You can't just grab your crotch and hope. You gotta know the note's there, see it, and take it."

"My problem is — "

"Don't talk. Don't think. Just do what I say." Ned ran him through some scales to locate his break and to hear how smoothly Eddie could get across it. Then he demonstrated how to come down on a high note from above. Finally, he said, "If you sniff just before that phrase, it'll lift your palate and give you plenty of room. Try it." Eddie smiled awkwardly, tried the phrase. He still cracked.

"Don't be coy. Sniff big! Snort if you have to." Eddie did it again, inhaling mightily. The phrase came out twice as loud as before, and the top note sailed, clear and strong. Eddie looked astonished. Ned said, "Careful. You don't know your own strength." They both laughed. "Try it again. May have been a fluke." But the same thing happened. "OK. Now you have to put it in with the other two phrases." He glanced out into the chapel, saw that Hartwiger and a few voice students were watching with interest. "Try a whole verse, but only sniff before the last phrase."

Eddie started, but cracked on the first note. "Easy. You're tired. Don't break anything." Eddie opened his mouth, but no sound came out. "Stop. That's enough. Does your throat hurt?"

"No, but I do feel a little hoarse."

"You've been shouting. I thought so. Don't sing tomorrow until an hour before the performance. Then warm up thoroughly."

"But I've got my lesson tomorrow."

Ned frowned. "Dr. Hartwiger?"

"Yes?"

"Were you planning to hurt this boy tomorrow?"

There were a few snickers from his little audience. "Yes," came the reply. "Severely." More snickers. Eddie was blushing deeply.

"Ah." Ned turned to Eddie, shrugged apologetically. "I'm outranked here."

"But he won't have to sing," Hartwiger said. The voice students oohed, delighted. Eddie began to squirm.

"Well then," Ned said. "Tutorial over. I'll see you tomorrow." Eddie practically ran off the stage.

Hartwiger stood. "Goodnight, children. It's past your bedtime." The little crowd dispersed, laughing and talking. He came up to Ned. "Our other soloist will require somewhat more delicate handling. She awaits you in the oratory."

"Oh, God."

"It seems you played a childish prank on her, and she demands an apology."

"I — ? She demands — ?" Ned was sputtering.

"I should make clear that my sympathies are entirely with you in this matter. But she has little to lose by refusing to sing, and she will refuse to sing if you do not apologize. I have no one to replace her, and the concert will have to be cancelled."

Ned tried to swallow his fury. "You couldn't just cut her solos?"

"I think not. Musically it would be a shame, although I believe it would still be a reasonably rewarding evening. Politically, however…"

"She's really mad because I — "

"Don't tell me. It doesn't matter, Mr. Baer. You are insulted, and you have a right to be. I am mortified to be put in this position. I can't imagine what you must think of us. The day after tomorrow you will be gone, and you will have in your possession a marvelous story of the amazing airs we provincial amateurs put on, with which to delight your friends for years to come. We will still be here, trying to make do with a shamefully small budget, which the president controls. Mr. Baer, I implore you, have mercy."

Again Ned detected irony in Hartwiger's voice, and again could not be sure at whom it was directed. But there was no question about his doing what Hartwiger asked. If Ned got up on his high horse, it could backfire, and he'd get the reputation for being a prima donna who was too good to indulge the yokels. And his position was shaky enough as it was. He needed to do well on this broken-off tour to even hope to be asked to do another one, and maybe even be able to set up a tour or two on his own merits.

Besides, it was Hartwiger who was asking, and Ned liked him enough to do it for that reason alone. So he nodded and set his shoulders for the ordeal to come. Hartwiger sighed in exaggerated relief, and held open the door. Ned said, "What if it doesn't work?"

"It will. Nobody wants to not sing."

Ned marched through and knocked at the oratory door. There was no answer. He knocked again, then called, "Mrs. Yardley? It's Ned Baer. May I speak with you a moment?"

"It's open." Her voice was so quiet Ned could hardly hear it. He turned the knob, stuck his head in. Mrs. Yardley sat in the far corner, back to the door. "May I come in?" She made no response, so Ned opened the door wider, took a step. He looked back, but Hartwiger was no longer behind him. He went all the way in. "I'm sorry I upset you, Mrs. Yardley. I had no idea — "

She stood and turned to face him. There were real tears in her eyes. "Please. Don't go on. I know Johannes put you up to this, and it will only humiliate me further. It's I should apologize to you, bossing you around as if you were a student. I was flustered because I was so late. I was supposed to be here at 7:30 with everyone else, but my husband and I — " she bit her lip, then ploughed ahead. "Well, that doesn't matter. There was no excuse for my behavior, and I hope you will forgive me."

Damn, Ned thought. She's done it again. This woman is dangerous. He held out his hand. "Nothing to forgive. An honest mistake. I could have told you who I was then and there, and none of this would've happened. Shake?"

She rose and took his hand. "Can I buy you a drink to seal the bargain?"

Balls of brass, Ned thought, shaking his head in wonder. She saw this gesture and hastily added, "It wouldn't have to be alcohol, if you'd rather."

"I should tell Johannes," he said.

"Johannes can take care of himself," she said, not unkindly.

"I'm staying at his place."

"I'll drop you off."

"But Johannes —"

"Let me handle Johannes," she said, putting her hand on his forearm. "Wait here. I won't be a mo." With that she picked up her fur and walked briskly out the door. In seconds she had returned and was beckoning him, and he followed as if hypnotized.

Moraretur in cellula (Lingering in a little room)

They paused on the steps outside the back door of the chapel. She gave an abrupt little sigh, looking both ways on the walk.

"Let's go this way," she proposed, descending the stairs and starting down the incline towards the lower end of campus. She turned back when Ned was slow in following.

She held out her gloved hand, palm down. "Come," she said, making the peculiar scratching motion Ned had seen Old World parents use to beckon their children. "This way." She was now clearly in a hurry.

Ned cocked his head, but came down the steps. "You Italian?" he said as he drew up to her.

Mrs. Yardley laughed. "My mother was. 'Vieni, vieni, Giovanna,' she would say — humiliated me in front of my friends."

She took his arm, and abruptly turned right, pulling him into the darkness between two huge rhododendrons. In the cleft, Ned could dimly make out a rough-hewn bridge across a deep ravine. Two pairs of undergrads leaned against the railing, each couple well spaced from the other and the ends of the bridge, necking. Mrs. Yardley navigated around them. As she and Ned passed, the kids went still, like statues lining a balustrade.

On the other side, they emerged onto a sloping green flooded with moonlight and crisscrossed by sparkling sidewalks. "Up this way," she said, keeping to the shadows. Ned's pulse quickened. Little doubt now about what she had in mind. But where were they going?

At the top of the green they turned left and crossed beneath the eaves of what looked like the oldest building on campus. Two pale lamps on stanchions were set on either side of a second-story door whose stairs had been removed.

Seeing Ned looking at it, Mrs. Yardley said, "Watch out for that first step..."

"It's like a cave in a cliff," Ned said.

"Exactly where we're going."

Ned peered down at her. "Really? There's a bar in there?"

"In a manner of speaking."

She led him around the corner of the building, where it was completely dark. Her hands shone dully in front of her as she appeared to walk straight into a wall of shrubbery, but when Ned followed her, he found a break between well-trimmed arbor vitae and a short flight of three steps leading down. Mrs. Yardley was already pushing a key into the lock of the door at the bottom. She turned and smiled, then beckoned again, this time in the conventional way, palm up.

Ned had to stoop to clear the top of the doorway. Once he passed her, he heard her shut the door behind him and twist the lock. When he turned, her arms were suddenly around his neck.

The place was just two rooms tucked into a corner, right above the basement door through which they'd come in.

"My studio," Mrs. Yardley said. "This building used to be the whole college. On every side, fields and trees. There were even Indians in the woods."

"Wow."

"The Indians were pretty tame by then. Still." She lit a candle. "There's no electricity in this room. You believe that?" She draped her stole over the back of a chair. "So we can't have champagne. Or beer, for that matter. Sorry." She went over to a spinet against the wall, then turned to face him.

"Do you smoke?"

"No."

"Mind if I do?"

"It's your place."

"Doesn't answer my question."

"No. Go ahead."

She took a cigarette from her purse, put the purse on the spinet. "Would you... bring the candle?" She gestured. Ned picked it up from the table beside the door, held it out to light her up, then stood there, awkwardly, in the middle of the room.

"I never smoke before I sing. But afterwards... it feels good. Sometimes." She smiled briefly, took a deep drag, blew it out theatrically. "Like now." She smiled again, looked at him expectantly. "You can put the candle down, if you like."

Ned looked around, started to replace it on the table by the door.

"No," she said. "Over here." She patted the spinet. Ned took a step, put it down beside her purse. "I have a little brandy," she said, making to move past him. "I hope that's all right. I find it clears the pipes."

"Me too," Ned said, backing into a chair and sitting abruptly down. "Thanks."

She laughed, put a hand on his arm. "Stay there," she said. "I'll be right back."

"Where are you going?"

"All the way across the room," she said, taking two steps to a little cabinet and fetching out a decanter and two glasses. "Funny," she said as she poured. "A minute ago, when we were down in the basement, I felt bold as brass." She handed him his drink, then sat down on the bench at the spinet. "Now I'm shy as a coed on her first study date."

"Me too," Ned said, gulping his drink.

They sat in silence for a moment.

"I don't do this with everyone," she said at last. "But you quite ravished me in that love duet."

She waited, but Ned said nothing.

"I mean, you have a lovely voice and all, but lots of men can make a pretty noise. Do you study?"

"I teach."

"Ah." She sipped. "But you did study, didn't you?"

"You never heard of him. Julius Patterson."

"No! Of course I know him! Or of him. Johannes talks about him all the time."

"Oh. Right."

"I haven't had a lesson in years — I need a teacher. Of course it's hard to find one, around here." She sipped her brandy. "But that's boring, isn't it? All singers do is talk about singing. I really can't stand it." She reached for his glass. "This isn't what we need to be doing."

"What... do we need to be doing?"

She cocked her head, measuring him. "OK. Not so fast, then." She handed his glass back.

"Fast is OK."

She smiled, leaned across the space between them, kissed him. "There. Now we can talk a little." She sat back, leaned against the spinet. "But not about business, eh?"

When Ned raised his eyebrows, she laughed. "Caught red-handed. Yes, I came from Canada. So did my husband, for that matter. We were a package deal. Charmed the locals just to death. My accent was worse then."

"You don't sound like you have any accent."

"That's the Canadian accent. But when it's late, or my guard's down, I'll say aboot and eh? just like everybody else where I come from."

"So your guard's down? Or it's late?"

"A little of both, I'd say. How about you? Who do you sound like when it's late and your guard's down?"

"Dietrich Fischer-Diskau."

She laughed out loud. "No, really. He's much too restrained, too humorless, too... — "

"Too German?"

"If you like."

"I'm German."

"Your parents might have been German. More likely their parents. You're an All-American Boy."

"Is that a compliment?"

"It isn't always, is it?" she sipped her drink again. "Let me see." She looked at him calmly, almost meditatively, for nearly a minute. "You're an orphan, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"You cover it well, but I can hear it when you sing. Such longing. That makes me think the loss is still painful, possibly recent."

"I was eighteen."

"Ah." Her eyes became serious. "I'm sorry."

"Long time ago."

"Not long enough."

"That's probably true."

They sat in silence, eyes locked.

"Shall I tell you more?"

"I'm not sure. Are you a gypsy?"

"No. Just an orphan, like yourself." She took a breath as if to speak, then let it out and was silent.

"You started to say..."

She looked down. "I changed my mind."

"Why?"

She raised her eyes to his face. She looked so sad it almost brought tears to Ned's own eyes.

"I wish you were my husband."

Ned straightened up.

She smiled. "English is so brutal. What I meant was, if you were my husband, and not somebody else, I could tell you anything, and you'd understand. Or if my husband were not the self-satisfied Philistine he is, but rather someone else, like you, I'd have someone to tell what I started to say — but, because things are one way and not another, I changed my mind."

"But you could still say it.

"Maybe later."

"Why not now?"

She looked at him a moment, then took his glass. "Because it's time for something else now."

"It is?"

"Now or never." She stood, put the glasses on the spinet, then held out both hands. "Wouldn't you say?"

"I guess so." He took her hands, started to get up from his chair, but she pushed him back down.

She disengaged a hand, caressed his face. "You're so much taller. Standing up won't work." She laughed nervously. "Sorry to be so short."

"I have a better idea," he said. He pivoted out of the chair, knelt beside it, then drew her down onto the seat. Now their faces were at the same level. "Let's try this."

She put her arms around his neck. "I'm game if you are." She kissed him deeply then, pulling him close against her.

They sat propped against the wall, pillows behind their backs.

"Tell me about your wife," she said, whooshing out cigarette smoke into the air before their faces.

"My wife?"

"The love of your life, then."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean... the woman who made a man out of you."

"What?"

A sigh. "OK. Sorry. Tell me about your kids, then."

"My kids?"

"You don't want to talk at all, do you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Don't get defensive, I'm not attacking you."

"I'm not —"

"Sh. It's OK. I'm sorry. I'm just — ... Well, this is awkward, of course."

Ned started to speak, but she put her finger on his lips.

"I'll start." She thought a moment, then smiled slightly as she stubbed out her cigarette. "My husband doesn't understand me." She looked into his eyes to make sure he understood this was a joke. Then she kissed his cheek, leaned back again.

"I'm a trophy, of a sort. A really nice suit he wears to important social events. I'm more than decorative — I'm the bird in the gilded cage."

"I know that song. My grandmother taught me."

"Did she? Was she a bird in a gilded cage? Like me?"

"I don't know." He frowned. "I never thought —"

"Right. Just a pretty melody with some words you can't remember. That's what I thought, too." She sighed again. "My mother sang opera. She warned me about men, or tried to. 'Don't believe them, cara,' she told me. 'They'll say anything, do anything.' She was old-fashioned."

"Huh."

"How can you tell when a man's lying?"

"I don't know."

"His lips are moving."

"Ha ha."

She turned her face, put her ear against his chest. "'They only want one thing,' my mother would say. 'They think you have it, and they'll say anything, do anything, to get you to give it to them.' Life was simpler then, I think. 'They make you love them, they're so sweet and considerate. They flatter you, give you presents, write poetry about you, to you.' Well, maybe that happened to her.... 'You give them what they want, out of love, out of gratitude. You little fool, you actually think you are what they say you are.' That part I know about. 'So you open your heart to them, you open your soul. What they really want is for you to open your legs.'"

"All men aren't like that."

"All men are just like that," she said, in the same dreamy tone. "Some men are other things as well. But that's where things start, between boys and girls."

"It's not that simple."

"It's not?" she said, turning and propping herself on a hand. "That's not what you wanted from me?"

"No! I mean —"

"Your wife doesn't understand you either?"

"Don't —"

"Sorry, sorry, it's not like I didn't know what was happening."

"Wait. This was your idea."

She cocked a knee, sat up straight. "I ensnared you with my feminine wiles."

"Well, yeah — "

"You had no idea what was going to happen when I dragged you into my parlour, poor fly."

Ned was silent.

"Don't sulk, now. We're both grownups. I'm not accusing you of anything."

"But —"

"OK. Let's start over."

"I'm not going to tell you about my wife."

"Right, OK. Your choice. We'll talk about my husband."

"You don't have to."

"You mean you don't want me to."

"Well... yeah. None of my business."

"Oh, I see. Mamma was right. You got what you wanted, now you get away."

Ned threw back the covers, stood up. "I think I'd better go."

She reached for him. "No. Please. I'm sorry. This is all wrong. I didn't mean —"

Ned started picking up his clothes. "I can't be doing this. This is crazy."

She started to cry. "Oh, God. Oh, God. I can't stand this."

Ned stopped, sat down on the bed, tried to put his arm around her. "Wait, no, don't, I'm sorry —"

She pulled away from him. "Don't touch me."

He stood up again. "OK. Fine." He bent to pick up his clothes again.

She wailed louder. "O God O God O God —"

Ned stepped towards her, and she flinched away, shrinking to the far corner of the bed, her knees drawn up. "No! No! This isn't happening!"

Ned stood still for a moment, then said coldly, "Yes. It is. This is over." He stepped into his shorts. "Get dressed. You said you'd take me to Johannes's house. I don't know where it is."

After a moment, she let out a stifled roar of exasperation, balled her fists into her eyes. When she looked at him again, her eyes were rimmed with black, like a raccoon's. "Sorry sorry sorry," she said, thrashing out of the tangle of sheets. "Always saying sorry." She stood up, facing him squarely. "Look at me," she said. "Have a good look."

Ned stopped dressing, stood there, his eyes never leaving her face.

"Look at everything. Go on. You know you want to, and there hasn't been a chance."

He looked her up and down. The singer's pad of flesh beneath her jaw. The narrow shoulders, slightly stooped. One breast a little bigger than the other, with a larger nipple; both hung loosely from her chest. Her waist was high, hips broad with a little pot belly; the heavy thighs were puckered where they joined and at the knees. Calves were nicely formed, but her feet were flat slabs with stubby toes. The arms were thick at the top, but beneath the elbows her forearms looked strong and muscled: she must play the piano, Ned realized. She certainly had a deft and sure touch with those hands, with their meaty palms and shortish fingers.

The hands. He stared at them. They weren't particularly beautiful, though she'd spent some time dolling them up: blood red nails, perfectly shaped, rings on each third finger. Finger 4, Ned corrected himself. She's a pianist.

"Shall I turn around? Or have you had enough?"

Ned looked at her face again. She was shivering, though the room wasn't cold; her eyes no longer blazed at him, but the challenge was still there. "Can I see your hands?" he said.

"My hands?"

"Yes. May I look at them?"

An uncertain smile tugged up one corner of her mouth. "You read palms, too?"

Ned took a step forward, held out his own hands, palms up. "May I?"

She hesitated, then walked to him and put her hands in his. He sidestepped over to the candle on the spinet against the wall, straddled the bench. Then he looked each hand over minutely, tracing the lines of her palms, encircling and squeezing each finger, bending them gently back. Her breathing changed, and her face flushed down to her shoulders.

Then he said, "Play something for me."

She looked up suddenly, terrified. "No!" she said. "I can't play."

"Yes, you can," he said. "You do."

"Well, of course, I use it to warm up —"

"You know what I mean."

"No," she said, firmly now. "You can't have that." She looked steadily into his eyes. "But I love you for asking."

They gazed at each other a long moment, then she said, "I'll take you home to Johannes. Wait for me downstairs — I won't be a mo," and turned away to get dressed.

At the basement door she took his hand again and led him back into the night.

Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi (Fortune, Empress of the World)

Even before he put the neat scotch in Ned's hand, after bundling him into the house and sitting him before a new fire, Johannes began to talk.

"That glass in your hand is over one hundred years old. These decanters are his mother and father. At one time he had two sisters and a brother, but now only the brother, and he is so badly cracked he cannot be used." Ned started to protest, to hand the glass back, but Hartwiger shook his head. "It is very special to me, yes. My father gave me this drinking set to bring to America, to remind me, though he never said so, of the civilization I had left behind. He believed, you see, that America was a land populated entirely by savages."

"He was right."

"In his terms, perhaps, but I did not find it so. Or rather I found living among the savages more congenial to what I imagined was my fiery artistic temperament than the oppressive conformity of bourgeois society in my father's country. I say my father's country, because my mother was American, you see, though she was born in the same small Bavarian town as my father, and was distantly, in fact, what you call a poor relation. The snobbery and stinginess of the more fortunate relatives had driven my mother's family to come to America, like so many others, seeking a fresh start. In America, no one knew that my mother's grandfather had been a drunkard, and that his father before him was a gambler and ne'er-do-well who had spent several years in prison for theft and arson, and that his father before him was shot for desertion. And because no one in America knew that my mother's father had to be a worthless layabout because he came from a long line of worthless layabouts, there was no reason to deny him work, as had been his misfortune in his homeland. And so he worked, and saved, and advanced himself in every way he could, and in time he was in a position to be able to afford a trip abroad for himself and his family. I suspect his energetic pursuit of a fortune was fueled more by desire for revenge than by desire for a holiday, however. For where did my mother's father take his family on this much-deserved holiday? Straight back to his home town in Bayern. There, according to my father, who was twenty at the time, my mother's father snubbed the respectable Hartwigers by staying in the most lavish suite of the most expensive hotel in town, and inviting only the 'poor relations' to call on him. "

"I bet you wish you could have been there."

Hartwiger smiled sadly. "As it happened, I was. My father was sent as an emissary from the respectable Hartwigers to invite my mother's father to dine. While my father was kept waiting in the hotel lobby, my mother came in from a shopping trip. It was love at first sight."

"Oh, my God. Just like Romeo and Juliet."

"Too much like Romeo and Juliet. Imagine that Romeo had shown up at the tomb five minutes later, or that Juliet had awakened five minutes sooner. What would have happened? Yes, their ingenious plan would have worked, but then what? They would have had to explain to their families that the union of their hearts had been crowned by the union of their bodies, with, in all probability, the predictable consequence. Such was the case with my mother and father. I was never able to discover all the squalid details, but within two months of my mother's return to America she was shipped back, whereupon she was immediately married to my father. I was born six months after the wedding."

"Wow. Still, it's pretty romantic."

"I suspect almost all first children are conceived in circumstances that are, broadly speaking, pretty romantic. Are you, by chance, a first child?"

"Yes, but I never thought — " he broke off, wondering. He knew that his parents had met when they were teenagers — in high school, they told him — but it had never occurred to him that it might have been romantic for them. They had been, well, his parents. And yet they were, when they married, ten years younger than he himself was now.

Hartwiger leaned forward and took the glass from Ned's hand. "What I was going to say about the glass has little to do with my parents' 'courtship' or the suffocating society in which they lived, none of which can interest you very much, I'm afraid."

"That's not true."

"You have too many manners. I mean to say, do not be over-careful with it. One day it will break, just like the others. And then I can quit worrying about it." He smiled and refilled both their drinks and resumed his narrative.

"Despite the excitement I felt at being in a strange land, I was also often homesick. I had brought with me clothes and shoes; these all wore out and had to be replaced. Soon all my clothes and shoes were American, and the only objects I had from my homeland were two decanters and four glasses. When I was feeling sorry for myself I would drink, and late at night I would talk to them. The decanters were my parents, the glasses were my two sisters and my brother. The glass I drank from —" he pointed to Ned's, "— was myself. I would take them out of the case and place them around it as if they were sitting at supper, discussing the day's events. Many lonely nights I amused myself with this little game of crystal dolls.

"One night the game went on longer than usual — the decanters were arguing with each other in a way that my mother and father never had, or never in front of us. The father decanter said that he had saved the mother decanter from a life of shame, and that in doing so had given up his chance to become the head of the family business. The mother decanter blamed the father decanter for ruining her in the first place. The children glasses stared at the tablecloth in silence, their cheeks burning, their chests clenched with fear. The sister glasses were younger than my brother and I, and did not know this part of the story, and so were shocked and terrified by these appalling accusations. The brother glass began trembling with anger and shame — shame because his mother was such a woman, anger at his father for treating so harshly his beloved mother."

He stopped. Ned waited a moment, then raised the glass and looked at the firelight through the facets of crystal. "And this?" he said. "The glass that was you?"

"The glass that was me was horrified, of course, but also spellbound. The glass that was me willed the scene to continue, to become more vengeful and destructive, to turn into a riot of spitefulness and rage. The father decanter said she had ensnared him with her bold looks and shameless talk. The mother decanter replied that it would have been better for her to live the life of a fallen woman, at least then she could have had some good sex once in a while. The father decanter leaped up from his place and struck her, shattering her. The sister glasses fled the table and dashed themselves against the wall. The father decanter recoiled in horror at what he had done and fell on top of the brother glass, injuring them both fatally. Only the glass that was me emerged unharmed. My glass surveyed the devastation with remorse and sorrow, but also with a grim sense of accomplishment."

For a long time both men were perfectly still. The fire was no longer crackling, but gave out a steady hiss, and in the hiss Ned heard a voice whisper, The man is dying. The thought made him jump, and the heavy glass slipped from his hand. He caught it between his thighs, but it dumped all its whisky into his lap.

Hartwiger flung a handkerchief at Ned before hurrying into the kitchen. Ned sopped up the mess as best he could, calling to Hartwiger not to fuss. Hartwiger returned with a tea towel and a glass of water. "You'd better take those off. I have the modern appliances in the basement, I will wash them immediately."

"No, no, please, it's too much trouble."

"No trouble at all. I am the cause of this accident, with my stupid story, which put you so much to sleep you dropped the glass. You must be exhausted. Go to bed now. I will wash the trousers." As he jabbered he bustled Ned toward the stairs. Ned tried to protest, but Hartwiger kept talking all the way up to Ned's room. At the door he said, "Simply throw the trousers down the stairs before you retire. Now I will go prepare the machines," and scurried away before Ned could say a word. Ned heard him stump through the living room, open a door, and clatter down some wooden steps. Then the house was suddenly silent.

Ned carefully folded his shirt and hung his jacket over the back of a chair. The pants he balled up and dropped by the closed door. Then he turned his eyes toward his closed suitcase. He walked slowly over, opened it, and began rummaging for his nightshirt. But the odor of dirty socks and underwear made him straighten up with a jerk. He pulled out the nightshirt and closed the lid.

He looked around the room, spotted the towel and washcloth Hartwiger had laid out for him on the dresser. "Shit," he said, "if we're gonna do laundry, let's fuckin' do the laundry." He bent over and pulled off the nightshirt, then peeled off his socks. He flipped open the suitcase, jammed them in, and snapped it closed. Then he girded his loins with the towel, picked up the suitcase and marched out of the room. "Johannes!" he yelled. "Don't start without me!"

When he got down to the living room, he heard a wrenching noise and then rushing water. He followed the sound into the kitchen, through the door in the opposite wall, and down the steep narrow stairs to the basement. It was tricky going because the steps sagged with age, and it was very dark. The only light came from the left at the bottom, and when Ned got there he saw that even there the light did not shine direct, but was hidden around another corner to the right.

His first glance into the basement was so disorienting he swayed. He was in the middle of a forest! He stood a moment, blinking, thinking his eyes must be blurred from the liquor. But the rows of tree trunks stretching away from him into the gloom refused to look like anything but tree trunks. Oh, dear, he thought, suddenly frightened. "Johannes?" he peeped.

A huge shadow appeared among the trees and seemed to move toward him. Then Hartwiger's head appeared around the corner where the light came from. "Ned? Is that you?"

Ned walked toward him, reassured. "Sorry about this... I was trying to figure out if I should ask you — see, I've been living out of this suitcase — and since you're going to do my pants anyway — "

"Of course! Give them all to me. Would you like to borrow a pyjamas?" He held out his arms and Ned handed him the suitcase.

"I, uh, no, I think — "

Hartwiger smiled and shook his head. "Ach, die Dummheit! — how would they fit you? But I must have something…" He dithered a moment, then said, "But first let me start the washing of these." He lugged the suitcase into the glare of the laundry room, looked around for a place to put it down. Ned tried to help, but was shooed away. He realized Hartwiger was still quite embarrassed. He watched Hartwiger fuss uncertainly at the dials and buttons of the washer, then peer at the instructions on the lid. He's never done this before in his life, Ned realized.

Hartwiger threw an angry glance over his shoulder. "Go, go upstairs, make a drink. I will find you a bathrobe then."

"I can help," Ned said, moving a step into the room.

"Not in my house!" Hartwiger snapped, then, apologetically, "I mean, you are my guest. Guests do not wash their own clothes."

Ned tried to protest. "I do this all the time at home," he said, "wash my own clothes, I mean."

Hartwiger turned to face him. "You do?" His look of relief was almost comic. "You can cause this apparat to work?"

Ned had to clench his jaw to keep from laughing out his own relief. "I think they're pretty much alike. Lemme have a look."

Hartwiger stepped aside, but hovered close by. "If you could but get me started," he offered.

"Bullshit," Ned said, confident now. "Let's do your wash, too. Give this sucker a workout. Looks like it hasn't been used for years."

"It hasn't, not since my wife died, years ago."

Ned's smile faded, but Hartwiger waved it away, "Tell me what to do."

"Go get your dirty clothes."

"Right! And a bathrobe for you." He dashed around the corner.

Ned checked the controls and then rummaged in the cabinets for detergent. He found a box of Duz, but when he tried to take it off the shelf his thumb went through the soggy cardboard. Oh-oh, he thought, what little critter's made its home in here? He carefully lifted the box, but the bottom stuck to the shelf, and all he did was uncover a shapeless gob of what had once been a fine laundry powder. He probed at it with a tentative finger, but nothing moved, and he'd put a dent in the mound, so it would probably crumble up nicely enough. Soap doesn't go bad, does it? he wondered, but sniffed his finger just in case. All he smelled was laundry soap, and it made him sneeze quite satisfactorily.

"Now," he said to the washer, "I should run you through an empty cycle first." He pulled out the timer and wrenched it around to NORMAL, then punched it back in. Water gushed into the basket. He turned the TEMP setting to H, the level to L. Then he dug a handful off the top of the blob of detergent and ground it between his palms over the water. He thought a moment, then rummaged again and came up with a glass bottle of bleach, poured some of that in, and closed the lid.

Since there was nothing to do until the cycle was finished, he went out into the larger dark room to see if his hallucinated forest was still there. Sure enough, the posts bearing up the first floor of the house were the raw trunks of what looked to be sycamore trees, the flaky bark still on — though tattered and hanging loose in places — with the knob of a lopped off branch here and there. Each was about a foot in diameter, but none was entirely straight. They were footed in the concrete, and so appeared to grow up through the floor. The ceiling was in total shadow, so Ned could not disprove the notion he had that they went straight up through the house, perhaps sprouting leaves above the roof line.

He was still marveling when he heard Hartwiger coming down the stairs. He went back to check the machine, which was still sloshing empty water in its enameled gut. He spied an old sponge and thought he might wipe some of the dust away, but when he wet it in the slop sink the sponge disintegrated. Hell with it.

Hartwiger appeared in the doorway with a double armful of clothes, his face flushed and happy. Ned got them started sorting the clothes into heaps on the floor — whites first, darks last, everything else in between — in receding order, away from the machine.

They couldn't get the dryer to work, but out in the big room a cord had been strung between pairs of posts, and after more rummaging Ned came up with a bibbed apron, its pockets lumpy with clothespins — the old-fashioned kind with blunt heads, that looked like little armless men. He put it on with a laugh and preened before his host, but Hartwiger turned away with a wan smile, as if in pain. Ned took the apron off and fumbled busily in the first pile of clothes.

In a moment Hartwiger was beside him, fumbling busily as well. "What do we do now?"

Ned looked at him for a moment. "Uh, nothing. Just wait. When the machine gets through ripping them to shreds, we hang them up."

"With the clothespins from the apron."

Ned swallowed. "Yes. I'm sorry, I didn't mean — "

Hartwiger shook his head, then said, "Odd, is it not, the things which conjure the dead? A tiny apron with bulging pockets. How could you have known? It took me by surprise, that is all." They were silent a moment. "This will take all night. You need your rest. I can finish here, thanks to your excellent instruction."

"Look, I'm getting clean shorts out of this deal, the least I can do is keep you company."

And so they did their laundry, gabbing happily for the next two hours. Between loads they went upstairs. Each time they emerged from the basement door, Ned went to the stove and set the timer, while Hartwiger went in to poke the fire and pour them each another drink.

Their talk ranged from Mrs. Yardley's antics with previous guest soloists — she rarely failed to make a conquest, and she never failed to try — to Ned's antics with the page turner's pearls, though Ned revised this story somewhat — she was the one who was so drunk she lost her balance and Ned was only reaching for her arm to steady her, but she thought he was trying to feel her up and pushed him so that he fell down the stairs, and so on. They went further and further into the past.

"My first year in music school," Ned was saying, "Patterson, whom you know, let me into his professional choir as a countertenor. Every week I had to learn a new Mass, a new Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, and four new anthems: it was like boot camp. Six-eight hours a week in that gorgeous cathedral, heaping platefuls of fantastic music — I think it got to me somehow, carried me away. I began to do the church stuff, too, you know — bought a prayer book, started going to services I didn't have to sing at, went to church even when there wasn't a service going on. I turned into a religious fanatic."

Hartwiger nodded, but weakly. Ned was sure he was going to sleep. The fire was barely making a sound. Ned looked at his wrist, realized he'd left his watch in his room. He got up quietly, watching Hartwiger, who didn't move. Then he tiptoed into the kitchen, checked the timer. The last load would be ready to hang up in a couple minutes. He turned off the timer, looked out the window above the sink.

In the bowels of the basement the washer whirred, spinning into the home stretch, but there was no other sound. Or rather what noise there was was steady and muffled, amounting to a kind of silence. Even the normal chatter of his roof brain was subdued, almost sleepy. And out of this smooth flow of sound the sentence again dropped, plunking into his consciousness like a pebble into a still pond: The man is dying.

Below, the washer stopped with a thunk, and the immediate real silence was like vertigo, causing him to sway toward the cellar door as if into a sudden vortex. Ned straightened, stood very still until his balance returned. "I'm really tired," he whispered. "And loaded. Better be careful." He went slowly down the stairs, through the forest and into the laundry room.

He brushed his hand across the edge of the washer, which was still warm, and felt it prickle with a faint electrostatic charge. But even as he ran his fingers along the hard white enamel, the heat and the charge drained away, and he was touching something cold and inert, a dead thing.

He opened the washer's lid and plunged both hands into the damp clothes stuck to the inner circumference of the basket, then pulled them out in a stringy gob and draped them around his neck. He went out into the big room and hung them up, jamming the clothespins onto the line, making the rest of the wet clothes dance weirdly around him.

This expense of energy soothed him. He walked back into the laundry room, took off the apron and looked around to make sure nothing had been forgotten. As he was about to hang the apron on a nail beside the door, he noticed Hartwiger's vest and tie on top of the dead dryer. He looked again at the apron, remembered Hartwiger's face when he first saw it.

And in that moment he knew that if he wanted it, he could replace Hartwiger in the music department. Great, he thought. The perfect guest: murders his host and steals his job. "I'm a shit," he said softly, but more in wonder than disgust. He picked up the vest and tie, carefully folded them over his arm, then found the switch and turned off the light.

Once he'd batted his way through the jungle of clothes, he saw that the forest was not completely dark. Blue light like woodsmoke backlit the tree trunks so that Ned easily found his way to the stairs.

Up in the kitchen the air had changed subtly. It seemed to be in motion, and there was a whiff of cold. Fire must've gone out, Ned thought as he tiptoed through the kitchen into the living room.

Hartwiger was indeed asleep, and Ned carefully pulled the glass out of his hand. He set it on the bar next to his own, hesitated, then drained them both off. At last he bent over Hartwiger again.

"Johannes?" he said softly. "Johannes? Time for bed."

Hartwiger stirred and mumbled, then slumped back. Ned could hardly bear to wake him. He put his hand against the old man's cheek for a moment, then gently shook his shoulder. "Johannes. It's Ned."

Hartwiger's eyelids fluttered, opened on unfocused eyes. "Whuh?"

"The laundry's done. Time for bed."

Hartwiger continued to stare, eyes turned out, lids drooping. "I'm so tired."

"I know you are, we both are," Ned cooed, insinuating his arm behind Hartwiger's back. "Let's get into our nice soft beds and then we can really sleep. Upsydaisy," he said, pulling Hartwiger to his feet. He was heavier than Ned expected, with the dead weight of near sleep. Ned thought he could carry him but wasn't sure enough to try, so they tottered slowly up the stairs, his arm around Hartwiger's back, holding him up by both elbows.

Ned laid Hartwiger down and took off his shoes, but didn't know what else to do, and so just left him and went back to his own room. He didn't remember even getting into bed.

Primo vere (Springtime)

Ned awakened late in the morning to an empty house. His clothes were in a neatly folded stack on the chair at the foot of the bed.

A note in the kitchen informed him that Hartwiger had gone to class and lessons. Something nagged at Ned's memory — was he supposed to be there? — but the note said nothing, so evidently Hartwiger wasn't expecting him.

After preparing a pot of really bad coffee and making some toast, Ned dug out his itinerary, which only said "MORNING — On Campus/ AFTERNOON — Free." It was 11:30 by then, so the morning on campus was shot. He called the college switchboard and was patched through to Hartwiger's office, but there was no answer. When he got the operator back he asked for directions to campus, but he didn't know where he was and she didn't have Hartwiger's address just handy. She said she'd find out and call him back. He waited half an hour and then called her, but a student answered and said Mrs. So-and-so'd gone to lunch.

Great. He could sit by the phone and hope Hartwiger would call eventually, or strike out on his own. He sat in indecision for another fifteen minutes, then took a shower, got dressed, and went out.

It was another gorgeous day, and he was hung over even worse than the day before. But once outside in the sunshine, after a couple colossal sneezes, his headache began to break up and his unruly guts straightened out. And once he'd walked a couple blocks in the white warming air, a delicious peace descended into him, and all he wanted to do was walk, and breathe, and look around at the world.

"Omnia sol temperat," he sang softly, "purus et subtilis," and though this gave him a momentary jag of anxiety about the concert, it blew away like a puff of match smoke. For it was true: all things were being tempered by the clear, keen light of the sun. Mud glistened and oozed between curly bunches of dead grass in the border strips alongside the street. Overhead naked branches clacked together when the wind stirred them. The wind itself was still cold, but came only in gusts that had little force behind them.

And Ned was a creature of this unlocking new world, a new-hatched bug creeping across a slab of concrete that was being cracked open by spring. He had no idea where he was going, and no longer cared. He'd left his watch behind, but so what? Time was for domestic animals, the indoor bugs, the cockroaches.

So he walked and walked, humming from time to time, kicking a pebble now and then, glancing at houses and cars, but gazing long at trees and weed stalks and mud.

He saw few people, and those only from a distance. A woman in a housecoat with a kerchief on her head came out of her house, flipped open the milk box and pulled out two white bottles, then went back inside. An old man stood at his picture window, watching Ned without blinking while he passed by on the other side of the street.

Ned had been wending his way more or less uphill most of the time. Had he thought about it, he'd have realized he was headed away from the town, which curved around an elbow of the river in the valley. But he didn't think about it, and so was surprised when the street he was on simply stopped at the edge of a field. To continue in a straight line he would have to leap a ditch that cut across his path. Beyond that the field rose gently away from him to a row of trees that evidently marked the far border of the lot.

He looked behind, and saw that the houses had run out at the last cross street; he was standing at a simple dead end at the edge of town. He considered taking a walk in the country. Well, not too far, he did have to be back sometime. But perhaps he could get a nice view of the town from up there at the top of the field, maybe even spot the college. He jumped the ditch and began to climb.

The footing was more hazardous than he expected; the ground was muddy, and he slipped to his knees more than once. About halfway up the slope he stopped, intending to look back and see if the view was any good. Then something caught his eye beyond the trees: it looked like a city skyline! But the damn town should be behind him, lower down, unless he'd gotten turned around in his rambling stroll. So he looked back, but saw what he expected, the town tumbling down the hill to where the river should be. Then what the hell was that up ahead? He peered, but it still looked just like a bristling row of sky-scrapers, which it obviously couldn't be. Nothing to do but go up there and find out what it was.

By the time he reached the top of the rise, he could see that what had appeared to be buildings were tombstones. The line of trees here bordered a road that ran along the edge of a cemetery. On the other side lay a flat field of about the same size as the one he'd just slogged through, this one over half taken up by fairly recent graves. And here, spread out among the stones, were more people than Ned had seen on the streets all afternoon, down on their knees digging and planting, or just standing still and gazing at the ground or the sky.

To his left the road ran slightly uphill to the end of the field, then levelled off as it disappeared into a thick stand of trees that he was sure marked the real edge of town. To his right the road descended ever more steeply into what looked like the older part of the cemetery. Staying close to the trees, he turned that way and went down.

He was soon abreast of the "old town." The markers and monuments were more varied in size and shape, their lettering greened with moss or blurred from wind and rain and lichen. As he continued to descend, so did the numbers on the stones, and before long he was submerged in the last century.

He left the road and meandered among the stones, reading their inscriptions and calculating ages, but soon gave that up — too much like work — and simply beheld their shapes.

His focus softened even more, and he saw not one stone, but all of them — and not as markers of anything, but merely as rocks coming out of the ground. And then just earth, with trees spreading their arms out over the rocks. And moss — moss upon moss — covering everything else.

Under the boughs of a lush stand of pines, Ned saw what looked like a miniature fort. A low wall enclosed six or seven half-submerged stones, grouped around a spire-like monument in the center. It would have been hard to spot if he hadn't been standing precisely where he was, and in fact it was movement — a squirrel, he thought — that drew his eye to this family plot tucked in behind the vanguard of encroaching pines.

He went over for a closer look. The entire complex — wall, headstones, and central spire — were all cut from the same gritty stone, now green-tinged black with age. He tried to open the wrought iron gate, but earth had grown over the threshold and jammed the gate closed.

Atop the tapering spire had been carved a draped sphere that had cracked diagonally through its center, making it look vaguely like a tipped-back face whose veil covered all features but the crooked mouth, which was either smiling ruefully or grimacing in agony.

He heard movement beyond the far wall and thought again it must be a squirrel. He tried to sneak around for a peek, putting his hand on the wall to keep his balance on the thick moss. When he got to the far corner, however, he could see nothing, for dense pine boughs draped the whole length of the back of the enclosure. But behind the plot the ground fell off into an astonishing ravine, where, some fifty feet below, a stream ran through deep woods. A ramp had been cut into the bank, and he followed it down.

At the bottom a path ran straight into the stream at a broad flat place on the valley floor, and there an old tree had fallen long ago from the opposite bank, making a natural bridge.

He paced around the near end of the tree, looking for a foothold, gauging the crossing — could he do it standing up, or would he have to scoot across on his crotch? And then the thought came, unbidden: I could just keep going. Into the woods. Out of the world. Just... disappear.

He turned around and squinted toward the top of the bank he had just descended. The sun had already dropped into the pines along the ridge, though up in the cemetery there would still be maybe another hour of daylight. Then the wind began to stir the treetops, its moan quickly building to a roar. And with the wind came a chill that bit deep through the already cooler air of the shady ravine. It was getting late, and he didn't have the least idea how to get back to the college.

He looked back at the fallen tree, expecting to find initials carved into the naked trunk, but the only writing there was the ancient track of worms. God, he wondered, doesn't anybody know about this place?

This is where the world ends, he thought, where the path runs out. Last chance to turn back. After this you're on your own: no guide, no map, no compass, no help.

Did the worms notice when the tree fell? Did the tree notice when the last worm died or left for good? Is that what you're hankering for, Sonny Jim? Simple erasure?

And then, from the top of the path behind him, came the unmistakable cry of a human being — a single, sharp stab of sound. Ned ran toward it without a thought, scrambling up the last yards of the ramp on all fours. Near the top, he heard it again, very close, shrill as a spike through his ears, freezing him. Now he could hear another voice, laboring. He stood up slowly, inching his head above the edge of the bank.

Not ten feet away, under a low canopy of pine branch, a woman lay on her back, mouth wide open, eyes closed. On top of her, his head pushed against her naked breast, a man thrust into her again and again. Behind them was the greenish-black wall of the family plot.

The woman arched her head back and the man reached his climax in a series of muffled yelps. She clutched at his back and pulled his hair, letting out the same cry again, and then again. Then they both sank slowly into the thick wet moss.

The ground was on a level with Ned's chin. They hadn't seen him yet, but just as this idea formed in his mind, she turned her face towards him and opened her eyes.

It was the student soprano he'd coached the day before at the recital. At the same moment he simply knew that the boy was Eddie, though the face was turned away, the dark head rising and falling with the girl's breathing. And then she smiled. It was all Ned could do to keep his legs under him.

She closed her eyes and turned her face to the sky. As silently as he could Ned sank to his haunches and listened.

Eddie was weeping. The soprano cooed and murmured, and Ned could easily imagine her stroking his head, lifting his face, kissing his eyes. She asked him why he was crying, and he managed to choke out, " — so beautiful, can't stand it," then sobbed again.

Ned's heart started swinging like a tetherball with each sound they made. But when Eddie said, "I love you," and she replied, "I love you too, Eddie," the tether snapped and the ball bounced right out of the yard. Because she didn't. The words were pitched the way they ought to be, the cadence was correct, but there was no resonance at the core of her voice — it was like the sound of an ashtray dropped on the rug.

But what could he do about it? Eddie was going to pay for this, possibly for years. Maybe he wasn't innocent either, would one day, maybe even tomorrow, develop that dead spot in the middle of his voice when he said those words. And why should Ned care about these two babies bumping their bodies in a graveyard? Because he was once that hungry for love? And that broken when he thought it had been granted? When, for example, Natalie, after years of acting like he didn't exist, had finally turned her gaze upon him and said, "I choose what I see."

Maybe. And maybe he was just so racked up from booze and lack of sleep and wandering around places he didn't know that he was susceptible to just about any emotional predation — a spring day, a long walk, a ravine that no one else knew about. A boneyard.

He looked behind. The stream and all the valley but the tops of its trees were now in twilight, and it was getting damn cold. The kids on the ledge above him seemed to think so too; their voices now had some urgency in them. Ned heard them get up, saw branches pulled out of the way and swing back, and the voices began to recede.

He waited half a minute, then stood. They were gone, though he could still hear them murmuring. He went to the head of the path and peered around a tree.

He glimpsed them fifty yards away. They were holding hands, moving quickly between the stones. They'd be going back to school, he realized, and decided to follow. Then he could find Hartwiger and get ready for the show.

He felt ashamed, but didn't know why. What had he done? They were the ones fornicating. Had she seen him, caught him watching them? He thought not, or else she would have freaked. But she looked right at him. And smiled.

He recalled that smile and was staggered again. Only this time the smile appeared on another woman's face. One he recognized but couldn't quite place. The relationship in space was nearly the same, his head level with hers, but in this eidetic image it was nearly dark —in a room, not outside — and the eyes did see him, the smile said so. Then the mouth moved and said, "Look who's here," and the man's head turned to look at him, but the vision shifted, and it was Eddie's face, and now the woman was Eddie's soprano girlfriend, and her face was no longer turned to him but tipped up toward the sky and her eyes were closed, and the man's face was turned away again and he was weeping.

Ned had stopped in the middle of the path in front of the walled-in family plot. Far off the soprano whooped, and he looked up, startled. They were out of sight. The sun was just touching the horizon. He took off at a run, trying in vain to spot them, and stumbling more than once on the bed-soft moss.

He came around a cluster of high-rise monuments and saw an old man swinging closed the magnificent wrought iron gate across the main roadway. When he heard Ned pounding down upon him, he turned around in alarm. Ned waved and tried to smile, but was so out of breath he could only grimace.

"I'm sorry," he said, panting, "I'm looking for — " he broke off, covering it with a gasp for breath. "Really out of shape." What was he going to say, I'm looking for two college kids I just saw coupling in your cemetery? "I, uh, I'm new in town, visiting a friend." Why couldn't he make sense? "Can you tell me where the college is?"

The old man just stared at him. "I'm meeting him there," Ned offered, as if that explained anything.

The streetlight above the gate crackled to life, throwing shadows down the old man's face, hooding his eyes, turning the rest of his face a ghastly yellow.

"I'm sorry, I went for a walk, I guess I got lost, and now I'm really late, can you help me?" The old man shifted his shoulders in what might have been a shrug, then raised a thin arm and pointed straight out through the gate. Ned waited for him to say something, but nothing came.

"Thanks," he said and took off down the middle of the brick street. At the next corner he stopped and looked back. The old man was still there, watching him, the gate still half open. Ned waved and turned away, then glanced back. The old man's hand was raised, but otherwise he hadn't moved.

Three blocks away, Ned slowed to a walk. He was too fucking old for this. Why was he running anyway? It wasn't that late. Sunset still came before dinner this time of the year. He had hours before the concert. But he was exhausted and dirty. And lost. And he could be miles from the college, miles he'd have to walk, which could eat up all the time he had left. Even if he knew where he was going.

He felt panic beginning to stir. He was on the verge of a major fuckup here, and he had to get his wits about him quick.

And then he heard the bells of the chapel carillon.

Fortune plango vulnera (I lament the woundings of Fortune)

The performance of Carmina Burana was, perhaps predictably, an anticlimax. By the time Ned found his way back, got himself cleaned up and dressed, and found his way to the chapel, he had a mere half hour to warm up. The first segment was pretty ragged — the chorus was so energized by collective nerves that it constantly strained against Jannings' tempi and once or twice broke free.

Ned resolved to calm everybody down with his rendering of the Omnia sol temperat, but it didn't work. He couldn't get the smokiness out of his voice, and began to tense up, which made him short of breath at the end of each long line. Jannings tried to help by cueing the orchestra quicker than he had the night before, but the result was that Ned also started jumping his entrances, and the piece ended in a slow stumbling race to the double bar at the end.

But with the kind of ironic twist that Ned had almost come to expect, the Estuans interius went without a hitch — now that he no longer cared. As his mouth vigorously spit out the words, his conscious mind, freed from anxiety by despair, translated:

Boiling inside with vehement rage,
Bitterly I berate myself.
Made of stuff, born out of ashes,
I'm just a leaf the winds play with...
On the wide road (i.e., to perdition) I go my way
as youth is wont to do;
tangled in evil, blind to the good,
More avid for carnal delight
than I am for my health;
dead in soul, I only take care
of my own skin.

At the end he gave a sardonic smile and sat down emphatically. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jannings look over at him in approval, as if to say, "Now we're getting somewhere."

Eddie, who followed with the Olim lacus colueram, didn't take long to demolish whatever coherence Ned had helped the group to achieve. His voice cracked on the first note and he lost his nerve, and squeaked out the rest of the piece in a breathless falsetto. Suddenly Ned remembered that he was supposed to have coached the kid today, and cringed as Eddie floundered through the piece, every desperate note a reproach. Maybe that's why Eddie wept on the soprano's breast. Ned glanced at her, but she was watching Eddie with tears in her eyes. When Eddie was finished, he dragged himself back to his place in the tenor section, never once looking at Ned.

It went downhill from there. The Ego sum abbas fell apart so utterly at the end that even Jannings had to smile in embarrassment. The drinking song In taberna was joyless and slow, and in the short break which followed it, the choristers exchanged baleful looks.

Then Mrs. Yardley entered to polite applause. She acknowledged the audience regally, then turned bright eyes upon Ned. He must have looked miserable, for her smile went momentarily flat. But then Jannings raised his baton to begin the third part.

After a slightly shaky beginning, Mrs. Yardley took over the rest of the performance. Her confidence and address put spirit back into the chorus, and her Dulcissime was stunning. The final chord of O fortuna brought the audience to its feet. Ned bowed gamely, too ashamed to smile.

There was a reception following the concert at the President's house, where Ned guzzled as much champagne as he could. Everyone said nice things to him, and hoped he'd be able to come back some time.

But their reserve was palpable, and he realized that if he wanted more than the obligatory round of favorable remarks, he'd have to fish. This he was too demoralized to do, and took up position by the punch bowl. Eddie and the soprano stood in the opposite corner, looking awkward among their elders. Ned thought about going over and apologizing, but couldn't think of how to say it.

Mrs. Yardley stopped by to make sure he had everything he needed, but her husband drew her off, and when Ned looked again, Eddie and the soprano were gone. So he drank a silent toast to their empty place, hoping that the kid could get some mileage, by way of solace upon the soprano's breast, out of Ned's blowing him off.

After a while the party ran out of steam, and Hartwiger, looking drawn, came up and said they'd have to leave then if Ned didn't want to miss his train. They went back to the house so that Ned could pack, then drove to the train station, hardly speaking more than the necessary words.

As they said good-bye in the station, Hartwiger shook Ned's hand with both of his, looking earnestly into his eyes. With a stab of guilt, Ned wondered if the little man was thinking what he was — We'll never meet again.

Hartwiger gave a small, tight smile. "You sang well tonight."

Ned shook his head. "I did not. Madame President stomped me into the ground."

Hartwiger's face relaxed. "She was in good form, it's true. But music is not a battle. Had you been able to concentrate, you would have remembered that, and you would be pleased with yourself now. But we all saw what you can do, and admire you for it."

"Johannes — " Ned began.

Hartwiger shook his head. "You had things on your mind." He smiled again. "Write to me when you can, tell me how you fare."

And then he was gone, after giving Ned a short bow. As soon as his friend was through the door, what was left of Ned's self-command deserted him, and he sat down hard and wept, for a lifetime of missed opportunities, and for screwups great and small, and because he'd drunk too fucking much champagne.

"Ohhhh, Jeezus," he wailed over and over, rocking forward against his knees, then slamming his back against the bench, his arms wrapped tight around his middle. But even in this abandonment to grief, a part of his mind noted with delight the way the vaulted ceiling resonated with his cries and boomed every time he hit the bench back.