John remembered his violin and bow, still on the living room sofa. He trudged downstairs for them, but a small red blink turned his eye. Had he missed the message on his machine earlier, or had Beethoven and his own turmoil blanked out the phone? Thinking of Sara, he lunged for the “play” button.
The voice that replied was professional and measured, and so polite. It sounded almost sorry that they didn’t require a second audition from him, almost sincere in its good wishes for his future career. It hung up, and the following silence was that much more articulate.
John swallowed hard against the clog in his throat. He’d imagined the wound healed before they opened it. He stood motionless, quietly bleeding pride until the pain broke through. When that paroxysm passed, something new remained in its place. With a slow calm covering all else, he retrieved his possessions and walked upstairs. He could sleep now, having chosen which phantasms would bedevil him in the night.
“Do you hear me, Mister Button?”
John wanted only to sleep more, sleep eternally, but the urge ebbed along with the anesthetic. He turned his head, discovering an ache beneath that ear. Turning the other way brought a twin throb, so he gathered all his strength and sat up.
“Easy.” Doctor Hippert slipped a hand behind John’s back. “Are you all right?” After waiting an uneasy second, he snapped his fingers, turning John’s head. “You gave me a scare.”
“Sorry.” John strained. “I hear you… normally.” There was some elusive difference. Was it the fog still rolling through his head?
“Do you feel up to some tests?”
John didn’t, but he took the request as an order. He placed the bulky headphones over his ears, surprised at the feel. He’d forgotten they had shaved there; hopefully there wasn’t a mirror in the room. He plodded through the tests, nodding, raising left and right hands, identifying tones as higher or lower. He performed with half-conscious confidence, still not awake enough to be anxious.
Hippert lifted the headphones away, smiling. John didn’t return the smile. “It’s a success, John, all around.”
“Really?” He still felt no different, except for the haze slowly parting.
“Really. Your intensity discernment has improved twelve decibels. I could go into the corner and whisper, and you’d still hear me. Your range is about half an octave broader on either side. As for pitch discernment, you tested perfect.”
“I did? I did.” The corners of his mouth curled. “What was that tone, the first?”
“The control? Middle C.”
John looked to the ceiling, concentrating, and reproduced the note. He sung, hummed, whistled. Hippert put one headphone on his ear, pressed a button on the console, and nodded, but John saw none of this. He was climbing up the diatonic scale, committing each note to memory.
“Where’s my violin? No! My CD player.”
Hippert changed course, and got John his portable machine. He had a disc already inside, a selection made for the drama he anticipated this moment would hold. He went under the headphones, started the player, and began softly humming four notes over the first few seconds of faint static. Three G’s and an E flat. Dah dah dah duuuuum…
He galvanized with the violin crash, unwittingly shouting. His smile radiated joy, but slowly began to change. Bit by bit, his mouth fell open, nearly as wide as his eyes. “Oh my…”
Few things enchanted like a waltz. That hadn’t changed in ten years, since his first operation. His bow skipped across the strings, while his mind soared, twining in and out of the melody. He could sometimes forget the concert hall, the other musicians… but never for long.
The conductor of the state orchestra was finally content with their tempo, and called it a night. John scrunched in his seat to let the lead violinist past before heading for the exit himself. He found his car, next to the sign proclaiming the upcoming “Mostly Mozart” night, and started home.
The drive to his apartment was a long one, full of time for somber ruminations. His career stood at its natural plateau, to rise no farther. Old hopes were a quiet torment, now and again rising to become waking nightmares. He felt it coming again tonight, felt powerless to halt the cataract of pain.
The worst of it was, Doctor Nikisch had been wrong. The implants had worked; not as he had expected, not better or worse, just different. New doors of perception swung open, and through them he had blazed into the top stratum of his art. Tadeusz had lived long enough to see the glorious rise… and the fall.
Not a fall so much as too feeble an ascent. Musicians thronged to Doctor Hippert’s operating room, and those of other doctors who accepted the overflow. Traditionalists like Nikisch either changed their attitudes or fell into mediocrity, grumbling about the unhappy state of modern performance.
Had John been alone, he would have been the virtuoso of his age. He was instead the first, and those who followed gained the benefit of their doctors’ experience. John, his resources never wholly replenished by his brief supremacy, found an upgrade slightly beyond his means, then somewhat more so, then more so. By the time he considered selling his Lupot to raise money, it was no longer enough. By the time he nerved himself to sell the house, all it did was halt the slide.
He didn’t bother imagining that another operation could rescue him. He’d learned his lesson; each day he spent around ambitious young violinists, all straining to move up a chair, reinforced it. He feared the next surge, the tide that would wash away his ability to earn a living playing his music.
He longed for home, where he might spend the hour or two before bed listening to something. He despised the earphones, but his neighbors had no patience for his hobby. If only they understood; if only it could reach them as it did him…
…Occasionally, whenever the evanescent gift of rapture surmounted recollection of the price.