The Survival Game (6 page)

He grabbed a piece of music from the stack piled neatly on the table and pointed to it. “This,” he said, “is art. All the notes and the arrangement in which they are to be played. A performance that is less than what the composer wrote is not art. Do you see my point, Burl?”

Burl nodded carefully. “I get it,” he said.

“Good,” said Nog. He took a deep breath. “Then let's try it out, shall we?”

“Pardon?”

“Take two.” Nog jumped to his feet, rubbing his hands together. “Sit down at the table,” he said. “Go on. That's right. Exactly where you were before. Good. Now – how did you put it?”

“Put what?”

“‘Is there room here for me?' Is that what you said?”

Burl began to feel slightly more optimistic. “Yes,” he said. “Just for tonight.”

“Uh-uh-uh,” said Nog, shaking his finger. “Not so fast. You must knock first.”

“I have to knock?”

“Yes,” said Nog. “Kind of like in a story where the hero stands before a magic door and he must rap on it three times if he expects it to open. That kind of thing.” He rapped on the table top.
Knock, knock, knock.

Burl looked at him. The man looked serious and there was an eagerness in his eyes that shone through the strain and tiredness. Burl squeezed his eyes shut and rapped three times.
Knock, knock, knock.

He opened his eyes hopefully. Nog was staring at him sternly.

“You knocked?”

Burl cleared his throat. “Is there room for me here?” he said. “Just for tonight.”

Nog stepped back as if in astonishment. Now his face was half in shadows. “Haven't we been through this?”

Burl felt light-headed. “Yeah. But I'm supposed to pretend that it turns out different.”

Nog scratched his chin. He frowned. “What a remarkable idea.”

“It's already working,” said Burl, clinging to the hope that had sprung up a moment earlier and now seemed to be fading. “Sort of. You said something different.”

Nog stepped forward and leaned on the table. “But I didn't say you could stay, did I? So it isn't all that different.”

Burl's bright prospect expired. Just like that. This man was nuts. He was amusing himself, like a cat with a chipmunk.

“All right!” said Burl, shoving himself away from the table. He glared at Nog. “Thanks for the meal. I'm sorry for coming here.”

He opened the door.

“Burl,” said Nog, raising his voice.

Burl stopped in the open doorway. It was cold outside. Night. “I didn't mean to disturb you.”

“Perhaps not, but I am disturbed nonetheless. I disturb easily. I have spent a lot of time escaping from people who wish to disturb me. But what really disturbs me is how quickly you have given up.”

“Given up?” Burl felt a new wave of exhaustion overtake him. “I
tried
take two,” he said.

“Ah,” said Nog. “The name of the game is misleading. Sometimes, in my business, take two becomes take six or take six hundred. Sometimes the door opens to a wizard, sometimes to an ogre. Perfection is really nothing more nor less than getting the results you desire. That is never a simple business.”

Burl leaned against the doorway. “Yeah. I guess.” And with that he closed the door.

He stood for a moment on the deck, invigorated by the cool clean night air, the simple song of the crickets and frogs. The certainty of the moonlight. He breathed in deeply – once, twice, three times. He thought of the cave by the cliff, of gathering pine needles to sleep on, leaves and grass and moss to cover himself.

Then he turned around and rapped firmly on the cabin door. Three times.

It opened immediately.

“What is it?” said Nog.

“Just for tonight?” said Burl.

And as Nathaniel Orlando Gow stepped aside to let him in, he said, “Just for tonight.”

The electrical power for the cabin came from a diesel generator housed in a shed set a good distance back from the lakefront, out of earshot. There was a remote start, a switch by the door inside the cabin.

Even though there was a good long stone's throw of bush between the two buildings, the shed was well insulated for sound. Burl didn't hear the engine until he was at the door fumbling with the handle, with a bag of garbage in each hand and a pocket flashlight clenched between his teeth. He had offered to clean up, and there was a garbage can in the shed. The single can had been full for some time, and the shed was crowded with bulging garbage bags, some of which had spilled their contents onto the concrete floor, where bits and pieces were left over from the construction of the camp. Odd-shaped scraps of lumber, cans of paint, roofing tiles and boxes of nails were piled all higgledy-piggledy.

By flashlight Burl read the letter he had slipped into his pocket when he was cleaning up the cabin.

Dear Nog:

So you have wormed your way into the Big Apple again! How goes the battle? Are they treating you right at the studio? Is Mr. Gibbons easy to get along with this time around? I can't wait to hear.

Toronto is breathing a sigh of relief since you left. For one thing, it's truly quiet at night now without you driving around, the top forty blasting from your car radio. Such bad taste! Really, you ought to be ashamed.

For another thing, it's infinitely easier to get work done here at the old Canadian Broadcorping Castration. You're far too interesting – that's your problem. Here I am, a senior producer trying to work, and there you are being interesting well into the night. Think, Nog – this is the CBC: nobody is paid around here to be interesting!

All kidding aside, I love your idea for a new show and you can bet I'll put in a good word for it at the Big Annual Meeting. (Frankly, it's a shoe-in; Bernie loves it already. And anyway, despite what I said above, we all miss our favourite ghost slip-sliding around the halls at night. Miss him a lot.)

Anyhow – my work waits. Please give me a call when you're back. What am I saying – you call way too much. You support the phone company all by yourself! I mean a proper visit – in person – and not at three in the morning, either. Be a reasonable chap and come around for a meal. In case you didn't know, that's what reasonable chaps do.

Take care,

Reggie

The letter was six months old. Burl wondered what it had been doing out on the table. He slipped it back into his pocket. He closed the shed.

Burl stopped as soon as he had made his way out into the clearing where the cabin stood. He clicked off the flashlight. How different the night looked knowing that he had somewhere to stay. Nog had given him a clean shirt and a pair of pants. The pants were baggy but they were dry and clean. And the shirt was the colour of putty but finer and softer than any material Burl had ever felt against his skin. Viyella, it said on the tag. There was a tiny gold N.O.G. embroidered on the pocket.

The moon was high now. He heard Nog playing the piano, something very slow, serene. Burl wondered if this was the effect of the drugs. He had watched Nog take some pills out of a flight bag he kept by his mattress. Burl knew about pills.

A splash caught his attention. A dark shape swam across the head of the bay, leaving a silver wake. A beaver. There was a big lodge to the west. Walking down to the water's edge, Burl could see the outline of the cliff that marked the eastern head of the bay. He thought of himself curling up in the cave there on a mattress of pine needles with no more blankets than he could manufacture from grass and moss. How far the day had brought him.

Back in the cabin, Nog had turned off the lights and lit candles on the tables and on the piano. The one nearest the door almost guttered when Burl entered. A chilly wind snuck past him into the room.

Nog shivered and stopped playing. He looked up with some surprise, as if he had forgotten all about his house guest.

“Can you play the piano?” he asked, his voice sedated.

“No, sir.”

“Please, don't call me sir. Call me Baron, if you like. No, I don't feel like a baron any more. Nathaniel. Better still, call me Maestro. Yes, I like that. What do you think?”

“Maestro,” said Burl. “That's like a conductor?”

“Oh, more than just a conductor. Master. Teacher. Here, I'll teach you something. Then you'll
have
to call me Maestro.”

“I can't.”

“Nonsense. Come.”

Burl washed his hands in the soapy water where he'd left the dirty dishes to soak. There were quite a few. They'd need a lot of soaking.

“I'll teach you one tiny bit of my new piece,” said the Maestro.

Obediently, Burl presented his freshly cleaned hands. The teacher seemed amused. He pressed each finger, as if they were made of putty, into the proper location on the keyboard. “Quietly,” he said. Burl pressed down. The sound leaped into the darkened room. He pulled his fingers back in alarm.

“That's the first chord of the Silence in Heaven,” the Maestro whispered. He took Burl's hands again and moved his fingers until he had played four such chords. “Now again,” he said. Burl watched the keyboard steadily while the man moved his hands as if he, Burl, was a puppet and the Maestro was his puppeteer. Finally, after several rehearsals, Burl tried the four chords by himself.

“Ever so quiet,” said the Maestro. “The passage is called the Silence in Heaven, not the Bowling Tournament in Heaven.”

Burl wanted to stop playing. His fingers ached, but mostly he was afraid of doing it wrong. No – it wasn't that. It was the pressure of wanting so much to get it right.

“Hold each chord for a count of four.” The Maestro pointed to the whole notes on the sheet of music, but Burl only glanced up for a second, for as soon as his eyes left the keys, his fingers lost their places. Besides, the pencil marks scribbled on the paper meant nothing to him.

“There's been a lot of crashing around in the piece up to here,” said the Maestro. “The choir has been booming. So this is a kind of breather for the audience. The strings will play it alone.”

Burl played the progression of four chords as quietly as he could, but this time the music seemed to resonate all around them. The Maestro smiled mischievously. He had his foot on the sustain pedal.

“It's an oratorio,” he said. “Do you know what that is?”

Burl shook his head. He played his little piece again and again, his tongue firmly fixed between his teeth. Then, as quickly as it had begun, the lesson was over. Though the Maestro did not say anything, Burl felt his impatience to get back to work, and he reluctantly pulled his fingers away from the silky smoothness of the keyboard. But he did not stop looking at the keys. And with his eyes he memorized the paths his fingers had taken to make the sounds.

“What's an oratorio?” he asked.

“It's an excuse to make a lot of noise,” said the Maestro, his voice sluggish now. “No, I'm kidding. It's a dramatic work, usually on a religious theme, with an orchestra and choir and soloists – the whole shooting match – but, unlike an opera, the singers don't have to act. Which is just as well, really, because most singers
can't
act.”

Burl was still sitting at the piano, admiring it in the yellow puddles of light the candles spilled over the keys.

“It's a great toy,” said the Maestro. Standing, he played a rapid arpeggio at the high end. Burl immediately gave up his seat. His teacher slid behind the piano without lifting his fingers from the keyboard. He seemed oblivious to Burl. Then he said, “Can you imagine. With the right-sized outboard motor what you could do with this thing?” Burl laughed and returned to his dishwashing.

“I'd drive,” said the Maestro. He played what might have been a motor revving up. A very elegant motor. “You could waterski behind.”

It was almost dark in the kitchen corner. Burl didn't mind. The dishwater was hot and soothing. He felt filled with calmness.

He heard the Maestro shiver. From a corner Burl dragged out an electric heater that he plugged in and placed under the piano. He had already noticed there was no woodstove in the cabin.

“It must get pretty wicked in here in the winter,” he said.

“I can assure you, Master Crow, I
never
intend to find out.”

Burl stopped washing for a minute and let his hands just sit in the dishwater. It penetrated him and dug out the bone-chilling memory of the night before, the rain-filled shack. He allowed his thoughts to drift into a dream. This place, empty all winter.

“I like the
idea
of winter,” said the Maestro as he played. “I like the purity of it. I'm sure winter is the perfect cure.”

“For what?” asked Burl. The Maestro didn't answer right away. He was caught up in a passage of music. Then he stopped.

“For everything,” he said at last.

Burl lay in the shadows that gathered at the end of the piano. The Maestro had given him a pillow and a couple of blankets. The corner behind the piano and beside the door seemed the most out-of-the-way place for him to stay. It was plain that Nathaniel Orlando Gow composed by night.

“I don't like to see the sun rise,” he said.

Burl, tired as he was, couldn't quite fall asleep.

“Are you famous?” he asked.

The man looked up from his desk. “Tremendously famous,” he said. “All over the world.
Horribly
famous.”

He got up and rooted around in the cupboard under the sink for another box of arrowroots. It was the only thing Burl had seen him eat.

“Is it horrible, being famous?”

The Maestro chewed thoughtfully. “There's only one thing harder than being famous,” he said. “And that is being Nathaniel Orlando Gow.”

He carried his box of cookies to the piano, where he picked up one of the candles and blew the other one out. He resettled himself at his writing desk.