The Morels Read online

  Doubtful, Mr. Strasser says now, addressing the audience, is the word you’ll find printed in your programs next to this concerto of Mozart’s, as it is considered by most scholars to be a fake. Penned in the last century by a violinist-cum-composer with a flair for pastiche. It is, like the Beethoven, performed only as a curiosity. It is not included in recordings of the complete violin concertos. The place it is most often heard, fittingly enough, is in the audition hall, learned by young violinists who, like the concerto itself, hope to be taken for the real article. It is ironic, however, that our winner, who turns out to be as real as Mozart himself at the same age—virtuoso violinist, accomplished composer—should be offering up this particular piece of apocrypha for us. Well, I think we can all safely assume that this piece, through young Arthur Morel, has never sounded more genuine than it’s going to sound this evening.

  Applause and the thunder of our feet rumbling the floorboards bring Arthur from the wings to take his place beside Mr. Strasser.

  They shake hands.

  Arthur is, somewhat scandalously, not wearing a tux. He has on khaki pants and a brown corduroy sports jacket. He’s not even wearing a tie. If Mr. Strasser is shocked, he hides it well. There is a stir of eye contact and smirks through the body of the orchestra, cut off by Mr. Strasser’s swift turn and raised baton.

  I set my instrument in its perch between my knees and, touching my bow to a string dusty with rosin, wait for my cue.

  Arthur looks relaxed, more at ease I think than I’ve ever seen him, and if I hadn’t recently come to know that stern inward scowl that was his usual expression (absent now), I would have had no reason to be unsettled.

  It is interesting to note that what was unforgettable about Arthur’s performance—the cadenza—nobody could recall him ever playing. In rehearsals he skipped it. Even in dress rehearsal when it came time for his solo, he just drew his bow across the open strings and announced he was saving up for tonight. Saving up? And what about the audition—I tried to remember. Coming out of that performance had been like waking from a pleasurable dream, foggy and spent: What cadenza had he played then? Had it been his own? If it was remarkable, it was no less remarkable than any of the other notes he’d played. Had he skipped one entirely? This seems unlikely, for it would have been a noticeable omission to at least one of the roomful of listeners. It seems more likely that he performed whatever stock cadenza had been included with the score. Neither was it a question I could ask Arthur myself, as this performance brought about his immediate expulsion from school and marked the last time I would see him for more than a decade.

  Coming at the end of the first movement, the cadenza is preceded by a solid ten minutes of performance, and I can’t imagine this auditorium ever having been filled with a richer, more vibrant music. Our playing is charged, excited. We bring Arthur to the moment of his solo with the lightest, most graceful touch. Mozart’s impostor would have approved. And then:

  A pause, the breath before the aria:

  I am looking at Mr. Strasser, who produces a wadded handkerchief to swab his glistening head. His eyes are cast upward, the faraway gaze of attentive listening.

  And then he frowns, mirroring a leap of panic that I myself suddenly feel—the silence has gone on a beat too long. He turns just as I hear a shout from the audience and something onstage that sounds (I can’t be hearing this right) like a loud, wet fart.

  In a nearby row someone exclaims, Oh my!

  Arthur had been in my direct line of sight, but now he is lost to the craning heads of my fellow cellists in front of me. A ripple of voices from the audience erupts into a full-throated roar. I look down at the front row and understand from each grimace, the muscle reflex of revulsion, even as the savory cabbage stink hits me: Arthur has opted for the riot.

  Pei-Yee, who had a front-and-center mezzanine seat for the spectacle, reported to me later: He just tucked his violin under his arm and turned. It was so fast. You almost would have missed it if you weren’t paying attention. He just turned and dropped his pants and oh—my—God! It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. He squatted, right there on that stage—and took the biggest, grossest shit!

  3

  BLACKOUT

  “IT’S HALF THE SIZE OF the place we moved from,” Arthur said, opening and closing doors around the apartment, as if to show just how small.

  “And where was that again?”

  “Jamaica Queens. For the school district. Metal detectors were the final straw for Penelope. Will put up a fight against the move, but not much of one. I think he’s thrilled, secretly, but doesn’t want to show it. Maybe he feels his happiness would be a retroactive condemnation of his old friends—or of us. Who knows? Yesterday we went to a parent-teacher conference at the new place. ‘Magnet school,’ quote-unquote, that’s what they call it—I suppose, because the parents cling to the place for dear life. All of us in this meeting, parents and teachers and administrators, could barely contain our gratitude for one another. The handshaking never stopped.”

  It might seem like I’m pulling a bit of authorial misdirection here for the sake of narrative suspense by not immediately recognizing Arthur Morel. From the moment he said my name, the moment he took my hand. How could it be otherwise? He’d have been unforgettable! It’s true. He was unforgettable. I was haunted by that act of his for some time afterward, all the more so for our passionate talk those weeks prior, which seemed to have provoked him into it somehow, and in this way made me feel complicit. In fact, his performance was so powerful, so seared into my memory, that my brain refused to reconcile this man—proud wallet snapshot of wife and child, breezing through his new two bedroom in Herald Square like some sunny realtor—with that brilliant but obviously troubled boy I had known those years ago. Even as we toured the apartment, I trailed in utter disbelief at the seemingly ordinary family man he’d since become.

  Arthur opened a bedroom door. The apartment layout was similar to the editor’s apartment down the hall. But there, this room housed the editing equipment. Here it housed Arthur’s kid. There was something familiar—not just in the structural echo of the space I spent my day, but in the spiritual echo of the one in which I spent my childhood. It was an only child’s room. Where unfashionable interests were allowed to flourish, safe from the withering glare of sibling disapproval. Outgrown toys, unembarrassed to be sitting next to current ones: Spawn action figures and a stuffed Barney doll sharing floorspace with a Super Soaker and a glittery pair of silver shoes. Above the bed was a poster of a blurry flying saucer with the caption THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE. Looking around I see other X-Files memorabilia: trading cards and comic books and bedding. Arthur: in charge of another human being—with his own room and a preference for campy television. Amazing! Maybe the shock had as much to do with me: it meant that I was an adult, when most days I still felt more like the occupant of this room.

  I was led down a short corridor, past several framed photos and a wicker hamper. “Bathroom,” he said, pointing to a door opposite the hamper, “and this one is ours.” There was no room like this at the editor’s apartment. We didn’t dwell, but from what I saw, it struck me as consistent with their adultness. Matching furniture, scathed from the recent move—veneers chipped, drawer faces crooked—gauzy curtains, a side table with a clock radio and a little dish for spare change.

  We ended our tour out on the patio. Here a few unopened boxes remained.

  I said, “I’m surprised you didn’t think of homeschooling Will.”

  “These days they call it unschooling. For one, there was just way too much paperwork involved. Lesson plans, certificates in postgraduate pedagogy. And for another, I’m against it. Penelope pushed for a while, using me as some kind of rhetorical point. ‘Look how you turned out,’ she says. I keep telling her that I barely made it out alive. She thinks I’m kidding! You get the control, as a parent, but at the cost of social isolation. It’s a lonely enough business not having siblings. I didn’t want to make it worse by denyi
ng him nine-to-five camaraderie or the opportunity to get away from his parents for several hours a day.”

  “Camaraderie? From what I remember, it was mostly keeping your head down so you didn’t get the shit beat out of you. When the chips were down, your ‘comrades’ ran the other way. Not that anyone would blame them—or you. And I’m not talking Bed-Stuy here. This was down on Grove Street, in the heart of lovely Greenwich Village!”

  “Well, you can tell Penelope all about it.”

  Arthur stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out over the rooftops.

  I said, “I bought your book.”

  “Oh no.” He turned. “Well?”

  “I went into the bookstore right after we ran into each other, and it’s been sitting in my bookshelf ever since, wedged between Sartre and Henry Miller.”

  “Good company.”

  “Other books I haven’t read.”

  “It’s a strange experience,” Arthur said, “writing a book. For months you’re inside of it, this piece of mental architecture, and it seems to be very important, the most important thing in the world, in fact—every living thought you have comes filtered through the windows of this place. And then it’s finished, you step outside it, back into the world. It becomes public property. You walk past it occasionally and think, What was so important about this place? Well, maybe you can let me know once you’ve read it.” The spiel sounded disingenuous somehow, as though he had said this very thing before in an interview on NPR.

  Okay, I was jealous. It used to be that I was in awe of others’ success; not these days. I was too impatient for it myself. Here’s the truth: I had started reading the book (how could I not?), but put it down almost immediately. It was just too good. The way it drew you in from the first paragraph with a tidal force. Each page layered with everyday objects refracted to appear startling and fresh, each observation a reminder of how much in life went by unobserved. Each sentence a jewel, not a preposition out of place. It wasn’t fair that the guy who was the musical prodigy also got to be the guy who could write this well.

  I said, “So what happened to you that night?”

  “That night.”

  “Of the Spring Concert! One day we’re having a—what seemed to me—purely theoretical discussion about cadenzas, and the next you’ve got your pants around your ankles in front of hundreds of parents!”

  Arthur sighed like he was relieved to have someone finally, after fourteen long years, ask him about this. “Well,” he said. He gazed at me for a while as though only now taking in who I was, as though my question had prompted his memory of where he knew me from, and not the other way around.

  “I remember feeling just—tremendous afterward, just afterward, even as I could feel people’s shock coming at me. I couldn’t really see anything, you can never see anything up there because of the stage lights, but that sense that something, something big, had just happened, and that I had caused it to happen, was palpable. It was an amazing feeling. But then it occurred to me I didn’t have an exit planned. I may have doubted that I could pull it off, so to speak, so I never visualized an after. I remember the need to solve the immediate problems. I had my own feces all over me, and I had to find a place to wash up. I pulled up my pants and just traced my way back down the aisle between the first and second violins, the way I’d come. I went back to the dressing room, used the little water closet there to clean up as best I could. And then I went about the ordinary business of putting my violin away. I took my time, loosened the bow, secured it in place inside the case’s lid, used my cloth to wipe the rosin from under the bridge, and set my violin inside, closed it up, snapped the latches, and when I looked up there was what’s his name.” Arthur pauses, frowning. “Odd. What was his name?”

  “The conductor?”

  “He was out of breath, forming any number of questions on his lips, none of them coming, and I could hear the slow stampede of the orchestra breaking up, making its way backstage. He finally asked the exact question you just asked: What happened to you? I could tell he was at a loss for how to handle me. His usual method of insults and browbeating didn’t seem quite appropriate here because perhaps he wasn’t sure whether I was entirely sane. Had I had some kind of episode? A mental break? He just sort of stood there—I don’t know if he was really expecting me to answer but seemed braced for me to do some other savage and unfathomable thing. I said, ‘I wasn’t thinking. I was doing.’ Which really must have meant something to me then because saying it felt so true, a paired act to what I had just done onstage. I would recall my saying those words to him afterward and feel, yes—I had just explained something essential about an essential and courageous act. And then, after a while, I would recall the words, recall that I had once felt a certain way, recall that they were meant to explain something, but could no longer remember what. It’s like what I was saying just now about the book. Time sets you apart from your work, your utterance, separates you from it. Some metaphor about birth would be appropriate here. Umbilical cords, et cetera.”

  “But what did you do then? After that night you disappeared. What happened to you?”

  Arthur tugged at his tie to loosen it and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt. He sat down on a stack of boxes that sagged under his weight. “I lost my scholarship. My violin teacher dropped me from his studio. I wasn’t officially expelled but might as well have been. There was no way I could have paid the full tuition, and even if I could have, after that who’d have taken me?”

  I shook my head. “Why did you do it? Arthur, you lost everything. And for what?”

  “I could say I did it because I wanted to do something that would be unforgettable to an audience. But then you would point out that any number of acts perpetrated on a stage might be unforgettable, though they—like the one I did perform—would none of them be music, and we’d have circled back to where we began, lo those many years ago: what is music, what is its purpose.”

  A nonanswer. Intellectualizing away an act that was so self-destructive, so against our basic nature as social beings. If my cousin’s kids were any indication, pooping becomes a private activity fairly early on, its smells and noises associated with shame—by five or six the very muscles and nerve impulses required will refuse to cooperate if others are watching. So why could Arthur? Why did Arthur? These questions were not answered by his ontological ruminations.

  I was going to press further, but Arthur’s attention became diverted—I followed his line of sight back into the apartment. His wife had suddenly appeared and was setting a heavy bag of groceries down on the dining room table as his son, toting a bright orange gun, stalked the room shouting silently. From out here there were only the sounds of air conditioners and traffic. Arthur said, “Shall we continue this inside?”

  He opened the sliding door in time for us to hear his son shout, “You’ll be lying in a pool of your own guts!”

  “Not if I blow your brains out first,” Arthur’s wife said in a cutesy voice, sorting through the mail. She looked up and smiled at us. “Who’s ready for a drink?”

  On my way to the diner the following week, I marshaled an argument against firing our editor, but Sri Lanka wasn’t in the mood. “This shoestring budget needs all the lacing it can get,” he said. “Is it my fault? Hell, yes, it’s my fault! But what am I going to do? I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to keep this guy around because you don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

  Our eggs arrived, and we ate in silence. When the check came, he told me he’d forgotten his wallet. I paid with a twenty I’d swept up from one of the theater’s dark aisles the night before, which left it up to our editor to pay the delivery guy for the sushi we ordered for lunch.

  We elected to shelve the Winnebago stunt in lieu of something simpler. It was a two-shot in a pickup truck between the young reform-school Hamlet and his yokel best friend Horatio, who is telling a story about some roadkill venison his father had once brought home to feed the family, to
hilariously disastrous results. Punch line: Projectile vomiting! The scene had been done in one long shot with a car mount, the budget only allowing us a few hours with the thing—we had originally conceived and shot it in Horatio’s living room but decided when screening the dailies that it would be more dynamic if it were told while some action was taking place (the speech was long). It was squeezed into the reshoot schedule as an afterthought—a few hours, a predetermined side road, followed by cutaway footage of telephone poles and passing farmhouses. These shots would be used to cobble together the best moments from each of the half-dozen takes.

  But even this fairly straightforward cutting-room task became, in the atmosphere of this place, an occasion for conflict. The editor wanted to do away with the cutaway footage, which he said was overexposed and blended poorly with the much-darker footage in the cab of the pickup, and instead intercut the earlier takes as shot in the living room with the later car-mounted stuff, which made for a rather edgy and stylized edit, one that Sri Lanka argued did not fit with the aesthetic.

  “I don’t get it,” the editor said. “You keep saying to get creative with this thing, and here I get creative and you object.”

  “Explain it to the man,” Sri Lanka said. I echoed back what Sri Lanka had already said, that while it worked on its own, it needed to blend with the other scenes.

  Though Sri Lanka hadn’t given me any explicit order to fire our editor today, the subject hung heavy over me—each look he gave I took for a signal. It was clear that I had two choices here: go through with the firing or offer my resignation.

  So when Sri Lanka excused himself to go to the deli for a late-afternoon soda, whether he meant it to be or not, I used the moment to do what I had to do. After I was sure we were alone, I said, “He wants me to fire you.”