The Last Rational Man Page 21

evening. Not likely though. They probably had her perform first so she could get back to Tel Aviv or wherever she was staying. He could have done something. He could've skipped the second part of the concert, and tried to catch her as she left the hall. What he would have told C was an interesting question. Come to think of it, there were only a half-dozen hotels in the country that she would likely stay in. A half-hour on the phone would have done the trick. It's so easy to think of these things when it is all over and too late.

  No fixing what's gone and past. The next step was obvious. Track her down through the internet. J read everything he could find out about Hélène. She lived in New York, formerly with her boyfriend, but apparently no longer. She raised wolves- and wrote books about them.

  J made a copy of the CD and put it in his car. For the first time ever he listened to classical music on his way to work. Dylan and Wonder collected dust, and the Emperor ruled. He made everybody he knew listen to the piece, told everybody about the concert.

  Youtube. It was amazing what you could find on Youtube. J was an avid surfer, and usually had half-a-dozen tabs open at the same time. Hélène playing this. Hélène playing that. Hélène teaching music. Hélène and her books. Hélène, Hélène, Hélène. But how to find her? Even just to send her a letter?

  J had to go to Taiwan on business, so he tried to put Beethoven out of his mind. But first he made a copy of his disc for a colleague in Hsinchu. Beyond that, he would have to concentrate on his work. It would drive some sense into him. What he didn't take into account was those long lonely weekends and evenings overseas. Sure, you can work part of the time, read part of the time, and flip through the TV channels hoping to find something in English. But you could also surf.

  He started on a Hélène search frenzy. Phone books were available on-line for every civilized country, and Hélène was civilized. He started with New York, since that is what he remembered from one of his searches, then he tried Paris, since she was originally French. He couldn't find her. London? Somewhere in Germany? No luck.

  Finally, exasperated, he went back to the Wikipedia. There it was, staring him in the face. He read quickly, very quickly, and often missed little details. In this case the little detail that he had spent hours looking for.

  No matter. Time was cheap on these trips. Switzerland. Where? Zurich? More likely Geneva – they spoke French there. He tried every Swiss town he could think of, and a few that he found on maps and deemed likely, but couldn't find her. A couple of people with a similar last name, but not her.

  He went back to Hélène's website. He had only tried one of the contacts there, her agent. He wrote the representative of the recording studio. Who knows? Maybe she would be more responsive. J wasn't too optimistic about it. A famous musician like that probably treasured her privacy.

  Come to think of it, who was he to disturb her? Just a guy who got too excited about some 200 year-old music. He should leave her alone. What would happen if he actually met her? What could he say? She wouldn't appreciate his right arm, and what else did he have to offer her? Clever conversation? He was good at that, but who knows what she was interested in. He couldn't hold a decent conversation about music, certainly not with a professional. He was pretty much a jack of all trades, maybe a renaissance man, though an imperfect one. Too little knowledge of too many subjects.

  He would just have to hope for the best. Hell, he'd be afraid to even shake her hand. What if he hurt her? What would happen to her music? And what was it that she did with the music anyhow? The piano was part of her, or maybe she was part of the piano, but there was more to it. After all, every really good musician is an extension of his chosen instrument. She played the same notes and the same instrument that pianists had for centuries, and yet she played completely different music.

  He liked surfing in the evenings, at home. It was a form of entertainment, not different than sports or crossword puzzles, with the advantage that you sometimes learned useful information, or at least interesting trivia. He tried to avoid surfing at work, though he knew people did. Just walk through the open space, and see what your co-workers were up to. Or walk into their cubicle and see them quickly switch away from Google to their Outlook Inbox.

  The thing was that he couldn't stop thinking of Beethoven and that red hair-band, even at work. He found himself surfing endlessly, looking for clips, photos, hints as to her address. He fell behind in his work. His boss was used to good performance on his part, and didn't say anything at first. He probably figured that J would come around after a bit. Maybe he was just under the weather.

  Sleeping got to be a problem as well. He'd stay up surfing and dreaming, and go to bed long after his wife was asleep. In the morning he'd stumble out of bed and somehow get to work without smashing into something. Once at work he'd proceed to fall asleep in meetings and in the middle of important calculations.

  At this point his boss called him aside and asked if he was sick. J said no, but his boss insisted on sending him for a checkup at company expense. The doctor found nothing, as expected, and told him to get more sleep. More sleep. You need to pay an expert to tell you what you already knew but wouldn't admit to yourself.

  J went to bed early that night. His wife was glad to see him, though he was too exhausted to respond much. Maybe after a good night's rest he'd feel better in that department as well.

  He dreamt of fingers, musical fingers playing up and down his spine, a concerto of a massage. His spine relaxed in response, the vertebrae vibrating in E-flat major. He felt a hard foot on his, massaging his sole, his pedal sole, his pedal soul. The fingers ran up and down his spine, finally settling rhythmically on the base of his skull.

  The fingers tapped, harder, harder, a crescendo that reverberated in his brain, a beat that finally was in his brain, fingers massaging his gray matter, tapping on his cerebrum, fiddling on his cerebellum. J's arms and legs twitched as Hélène danced with Beethoven. Neurons flew to join the dance, bits of gray snow filling the sky.

  The earth shook under the snow, and shook again.

  'Are you OK?"

  "Huh? Yeah. Just a dream."

  "A nightmare?"

  "I don't know."

  C rolled over and went back to sleep.

  Was it a nightmare? How did the popular song go? This could be heaven or this could be hell. There was a tune to that, but he couldn't think of it. There was only one tune now, woven into his brain by those incredible fingers.

  How did the Israelites feel the morning after God gave them the Ten Commandments? J knew. They were wired, wired without twelve cups of coffee or funny mushrooms, assuming that those grew in the desert. He bounced out of bed, bounced into his car, bounced into work, leaving a trail of neuron snow behind wherever he went.

  Wherever cloud nine was, he was way above it. He was flying. At the morning meeting one of the engineers grabbed him and told him to calm down, to stick with the topic at hand. 'Stop surfing- what have you been taking anyhow?' But he hadn't taken anything, just a bowl of Cheerios and a dream.

  That night he went to sleep even earlier, to leave more time for dreams. He saw the fingers in the distance, playing his song, but they wouldn't come to him. The fingers paused and waited for the orchestra to do their part, a thin silence in the air. The fingers arched out and beckoned. Come. Come. But he couldn't budge. Bits of gray matter were spread around his pillow, splattered out by the pianist's tent peg, driven by the same fingers that called. Come, come. The fingers dripped perfume and blood, and reached for the door latch, but the only door that was locked was in his soul. Come, come. The orchestra finished, and the fingers returned to the pianoforte, abandoning vertebrae and neurons.

  J stared at the ceiling the rest of the night. He had to finish this. He had to clear Beethoven and those fingers from his mind. But he couldn't just forget that evening, that concert. There was only one way. He had to meet her. Just for a minute. Just so she could tell him to get lost. Then he would be able to shake this thing off. The whole b
it was ridiculous. But how? How to find a pianist?

  By the morning he knew. Pianists play at concerts. He would just have to go to a concert and find her. He could. He would.

  As soon as he got to work he searched for her performance schedule. The next one was next week in Paris. Too soon, too soon. How could he arrange the tickets in time? He needed to tell his boss that he wanted a few days off as well. He needed to figure out what he would tell C. Most of all, he needed to think about what he would tell Hélène.

  What did he really want? Just an autograph? Would that do it? Or would it just leave him hungry? He wanted something special, he wanted to know that he was special, that her music was special to him. He should give her something, something symbolic, something that she would keep. If she had something of his in her house, or even, dare he dream, on her piano, then he would be connected to her in a real way. And maybe, who knows, he could even get her email address. He would send her greetings once or twice a year, on holidays or her birthday…

  But what? What could he present her with? Certainly not chocolate or wine, which, if he was lucky, she would eat or drink and forget. It couldn't be store-bought. It had to be something special, one of a kind, something that he would create for her. A gift that was