The Maestro Read online

  It was a night of strange music: the rain banging on the tin roof, something rustling the bushes not far off. An owl, a whippoorwill. Wolves. A piano. No. That was just a dream. But so real-sounding. In Granny’s church in Dryden there were angels. Burl wondered if this is what it was like when they played their harps. A cold, thin, distant sound as sweet as blackberries before they’re quite ripe.

  4

  The Lake

  WHEN YOU WERE HUNGRY IN A FAIRY TALE, AN old hag would pass by with a magic bowl or magic beans. Well, Burl had eaten what beans he could find, and when he awoke cold and damp in the morning, sure enough, the can was full again, but only with brown rainwater.

  So he took a bite of the north wind for his breakfast and headed out, up a path that had once been a trap line, until it petered out and there was finally nothing before him but bush.

  In a fairy tale, the woods might be deep but the paths led to a river where you could trick the boatman; to a castle where you could steal a golden goose; to a clearing in the forest where you could kiss a princess in a glass coffin. Fairy-tale trees towered darkly above lost children, but there was always a way.

  Sometime around noon, Burl stumbled upon a small green stream heading the same way he was going. He cooled his scratched and bleeding legs in the dark water. No trout in a stream like this, a dead stream. But it widened, and he meant to wade as far out as he could from shore and the leaning wall of vegetation, the better to escape the mosquitoes and blackflies and deer flies. A few steps out, however, his foot sank deep into the mud and, flailing wildly, he fought his way back to a firm footing. A loon-shit bottom, his father would have called it.

  He found blueberries past their prime by the edge of a stagnant pond and ate until he could eat no more but was only hungrier for his effort. The blueberries reminded him of food.

  He came to a place where the still stream widened out into a sphagnum bog. Seeing that the farther shore was rockier and less overgrown, he crossed on the spongy mattress of living plants, feeling it give under his every step but never give way.

  In the low branches of a tree on the far shore he came upon a deserted robin’s nest. There were two abandoned blue eggs.

  Burl had never eaten a raw egg before, but he had heard of people doing it, and his hunger nudged his hand forward. He cracked the egg carefully so as not to lose any of the insides. But the minute it was cracked, a hideous rotten smell and a glimpse of wet feathers made him hurl the egg away. He stumbled, gagging and spitting the smell out of his throat.

  He found his way along the shore of what turned out to be a massive beaver pond. High granite cliffs rose above him.

  He came upon a dried wolf’s turd full of red fur.

  He came upon saplings draped with the velvet off a moose’s antlers.

  He came upon a tree used as a scratching pole by a bear.

  He marked the sun when he could see it through the clouds.

  He crossed the beaver dam, slipping in the rushing water, bruising his knee. There was a way up the cliff here but even as he started to climb, the rain came on hard, driving down. He cut away from the shore and took shelter in the deeper woods. He stopped in a grove waist-high with Labrador tea. Moose loved this shrub. Once, when his father had shot a moose, he slit its carcass open and buckets of Labrador tea poured from the beast’s belly. When the twigs, leaves and flowers were young, they were aromatic; natives and trappers made tea from it. But when Burl tasted it now, with summer mostly gone, the fuzzy-bottomed leaves only made him gag.

  He recognized a mushroom he thought he’d seen his father eat. He sawed through the stem with his pocket knife only to find the centre eaten away by maggots.

  The rain pelted down. Could he go back? His eyes closed, he walked backwards in his mind through this long day to the cabin where he had spent the night. From there … yes … it was possible. He could make that choice, though it grew less possible the farther he went. But back to what?

  Burl hunkered down in the scrub, the rain beating down all around him. In the boggy earth at his feet he saw a fly climb into the inviting purple mouth of a pitcher plant. He watched the fly turn to leave, buzzing furiously as the bristles of the inner cavity made it impossible to get out. It buzzed helplessly. Then, soon enough, it fell into the small pool of water at the base of the pitcher, where it drowned.

  How easy to be a plant. You just stayed put and food fell into your lips. His eyes tightly closed, Burl tilted his head upwards and let the rain beat on his tongue, drizzle down his throat.

  The rain let up. Burl found his way back to the dam and began the ascent of the cliff. The rain had released a heavy perfume of pine and ozone. The sun came out. And so did the mosquitoes, to prey on his raw skin. He was too weak, too busy climbing, to swat at them.

  At the top he started to run along the cliff, following the length of the enormous beaver pond. He heard cries, and up ahead in the rinsed-out sky he watched two small birds dive-bombing an osprey. An osprey. Burl was sure of it. And that meant a lake, a true lake with fish in it. He raced along the ridge. Below him the beaver pond was narrowing to a bottleneck, the head of the pond. Across the pond he could see the cliff fall away and then, suddenly, he broke through a wall of spruce and found himself on the cliffhead. A bald promontory that dropped sharply.

  And there below was a lake. A high-sided lake of deep green water with the far edges pale golden with rushes. There was a strong enough breeze on the clifftop to keep the mosquitoes at bay, and so he sat, breathing heavily, drying out a bit. Across the lake stretched low hills of poplar with darker patches of pine like deep-green inkblot stains on a gold ground.

  In a lake like the one below there would be fish, all right, but Burl was not an osprey, fitted with powerful vision and sharp claws, able to dive for his supper. He had a lure and a harmonica but no rod and no line. Now if it were a magic harmonica, the fish would rise to hear him play and dance on the water right into his hands.

  Under the late afternoon sun he became angry. Angry that these fairy-tale words came unbidden to his mind. Useless ideas.

  Then his anger shifted gears. He saw his father again with the cocky smile on his face, waiting for Burl to attack. Cal had won the fight. Surely all he had wanted was for Burl to leave. Then he became angry at Tanya and at his mother, and at Laura for dying and leaving him alone and that made him angry at himself all over again until he was dizzy with anger. Dizzy with hunger, dizzy with the sun, dizzy with longing.

  When he could see clearly again, he noticed there was a small beach at the base of the cliff. Chunks of the cliff had fallen off; great square boulders littered the sandy shore. He began to slither down the rock face on his backside, reaching for toe holds, grabbing at roots and bushes to slow his descent. Halfway down he knew he no longer had any control. He was falling. Gravity was tugging him down at its own relentless speed. And then he was in the air, the rock curving back behind him. The free fall landed him in a heap on the sand.

  The sand was hot. The westering sun was falling on this parcel of beach between two boulders taller than he was. He turned; there was a cave he could sleep in. Burl pulled off his sopping shoes and dug his toes into the clean warmth of the sand. Then he squirmed out of his clinging wet clothes which he hung from a tree that grew from a cleft in the rock. Without a thought to how cold the lake would be, he hurled himself into the water, splashing out until his tired legs could walk no farther, then crumpling happily into the numbing coolness of it. He floated on his back, kicking until he was a good way offshore where he lay, a dead man floating peacefully with only his face above the glinting surface.

  At first he thought that what he was hearing must be some kind of underwater creature, though he knew of no inland fish that could sing as whales or dolphins do. It was music. He treaded water, lifting his head above the surface of the lake, shaking the water from his ears. He was far enough out from the shore to see around the cliffhead he had just descended and into a small, gently curving bay.


  At the head of the bay was a structure like nothing he had ever seen before, a grey shingled pyramid with tall triangular windows. There was also a broad deck that narrowed to a lower deck. It was from this building—for there were no others on the lake—that the sound must be coming.

  It was a piano. And the song glided out to Burl from the pyramid like a small boat on the green lake in the sundrenched air. He had only to reach out to it, climb aboard, and the song would take him there.

  5

  Interview with the Baron

  BURL SWAM BACK TO SHORE WITH LONG HARD strokes. He emerged shivering from the lake, the flesh on his arms goose-pimpled. With the sun scarcely rimming the hills, the air was already turning chill. Any night now there would be a frost.

  He shimmied into his wet jeans, hating the way they clung to his legs. He couldn’t bring himself to put on his shirt. It stank of sweat, and the neck was blood-stained from the attack of insects. So he set off towards the pyramid house half-naked, carrying his shoes and shirt. And as he rounded the cliff into the bay, he felt as if he was carrying his heart, too, the way you carry a moth from the house to let it go outside, aware of its beating against your hands.

  The sandy beach at the cliffhead did not stretch all the way to the cabin. Here and there the brush tumbled right to the edge of the lake.

  Sometimes Burl lost the music. He couldn’t tell if it was because it stopped or only grew quieter or whether it was just a trick of the wind. There were many notes, more notes than Burl could imagine anyone playing. One of his teachers played the national anthem on special occasions. But this music was like ten national anthems played at the same time, as if an anthem was sprouting from every finger. And it went on and on, growing and then mysteriously vanishing.

  The huge triangular window reminded him of a sail and, like a sail, it seemed alive in the breeze, filled one moment with a reflection of water and sky and the next emptied and replaced with geometric blocks of shade. But there was a piano in the window and a person bent over the keyboard.

  Then the music really did come crashing to a halt, seemingly in mid-phrase. The someone in the window sat hunched and still as if in prayer for a long moment and then rose, uncoiling to the length of a man, and moved out of Burl’s view.

  A half-dead pine stretched out from shore across Burl’s path. Wading around it out past his knees in the lake, Burl approached the cabin, hugging his shirt high to his bony chest. His teeth chattered. A screen door opened and slammed shut. A man appeared on the deck and made his way down a short flight of stairs to the lower deck which nudged out over the waterfront. He leaned on the rail and looked towards where the sun had been only a few minutes earlier but where now there was just the orangey-pink glow of its passing.

  He was stooped a bit, balding and dressed in a heavy grey coat, a scarf and a flat hat. He took a cookie out of a box but paused with it halfway to his mouth, as if struck by a thought. He raised the cookie, held it poised in the air, and then he began to wave it around. Not waving, thought Burl. Conducting. As if he was not on a deck at all but on the podium of a music hall and there was an orchestra below him on the lake. The man was wearing gloves with the fingers cut out of them.

  The man was humming, lost in the music. Burl plucked up his courage and waded towards him, cutting the corner of the bay now, splashing to give fair warning. The man— cookie baton raised—stopped conducting, stopped humming. He looked towards Burl, fixed him in his gaze. He didn’t speak until the boy was standing directly below him.

  “Hi,” said Burl.

  The man scratched his whiskery chin.

  “Let me guess who you are,” he said. His face hovered above Burl. It was haggard, but his eyes were alert and blueberry blue.

  “You are, by ze looks of you, a second bassoon player,” he said in an imperious voice. “Veil, I’m sorry, you’re too late. Ze position has already been filled. Good day.”

  He dismissed Burl with a wave of his hand. But Burl did not move. “I wonder—”

  “No, vait!” said the man. He took another cookie from the box, an arrowroot cookie, and took a thoughtful bite. “I’ve got it wrong. You’re ze new public relations fellah from Columbia Records—zey get younger every year—and you’ve got a slate of interviews with ze press lined up for me. Ja?”

  Burl looked behind him.

  “Oh, zey vill be arriving any minute—by limo-canoes, no doubt—and you vant me shaven und shorn und looking my best or you’ll never be able to sell ze new album.” He grabbed the throat of his coat together in his fist, and his voice rose in mock panic.

  Burl’s attention to this performance was distracted by the box of cookies.

  “No, no!” said the man, clicking his fingers. He leaned deeply over the railing to better look into Burl’s eyes. “You’re a child. Am I correct?” He had dropped the German accent.

  Burl swallowed hard. “I’m fourteen.”

  “I talked to a child once,” the man replied. “He drank a glass of milk while I ate breakfast. Scrambled eggs, I think it was.”

  Burl looked down. A school of minnows swam around his feet, which were as still and coldly white as rocks. His legs felt numb. He looked up again. The man was looking away, squint-eyed across the lake. Then, without a glance at his visitor, he turned and walked towards the house. He was leaving. Just like that. Burl panicked.

  “Hey!” he said. “Wait.”

  “You don’t appreciate my masquerade,” said the man without turning back. He sounded hurt, though Burl felt certain this was all part of the act. Quickly he stuffed his shoes and shirt under his arm and began to clap. He clapped loudly. The minnows at his feet scattered in alarm.

  The screen door had opened; now it closed slowly and the man returned to his post at the rail. He bowed deeply.

  “A standing ovation,” he said. “You’re too kind.”

  Burl was almost afraid to stop clapping, afraid that the man might leave again, the show over, the audience forgotten. But when he did stop, the man’s face had lost some of the intensity that had overtaken him when he was playing at his guessing game. It was then that his dazzling eyes took note of the object towards which Burl’s gaze helplessly drifted. He handed down the box of arrowroots.

  “So it’s my victuals you’re after, is it?”

  “Thank you,” said Burl.

  The man sat in a deck chair. “Do you plan on standing around in the drink all night?”

  With his hand shaking badly, Burl fished a handful of cookies from the box and shoved them into his mouth. He did not move until the arrowroots had dissolved to sweet gruel. Crumbs fell into the lake and the minnows returned, shooting to the surface to feed.

  “Well?” called the man impatiently. “Are you about ready to explain your purpose here?”

  Burl did not waste any time. He made his way around the lower deck, waded ashore and climbed a short flight of stairs.

  “I had the deck built like one of those observation platforms they have on whalers, but do you think I’ve seen a single whale? Nothing. Nada. Nichts.” The man was stretched out in his chair, his long legs fully extended before him. His overcoat was stained; the hem had come undone. A button was missing, and Burl could see a second charcoal-coloured coat underneath. The man was in stocking feet; one big toe stuck through a hole in a tired grey sock.

  “Have a seat,” he said. He ran his hand over his unshaven face, through his bedraggled hair. Burl could not take his eyes off the man’s fingers. So pale, so long.

  He looked around and noticed there wasn’t another chair. So he settled himself cross-legged on the deck. The man looked pleased. The tiredness left his face. He looked at Burl in a new way. “I looked like you once,” he said. Burl self-consciously pushed his hair back from his face. The man laughed. “Young, I mean. I not only looked young, I was young. Hard to believe, isn’t it?” He leaned forward on one elbow and made a face. “You are probably vondering vhat ees zees place and who your distinguished host might be, ja
?”

  “Yeah … yes,” said Burl. “Kind of.”

  The man looked delighted. He poked Burl in the knee.

  “I am none uzzer zan ze famous conductor and Arctic wise-guy, Gustav von Liederhosen. Baron von Liederhosen to you.”

  “Oh,” said Burl. He wrapped his arms around the box of arrowroots. “Thank you for the cookies, Baron.”

  “Are you not astounded beyond your vildest dreams?”

  Burl was certainly bewildered and vaguely frightened. But he was also fascinated and, more important than any of the feelings that raced through his tired brain, he was in need of food and somewhere to stay. Something told him that the baron’s performance required a performance in kind.

  “There aren’t many conductors around here.”

  “I should say not!” said the baron, smiling smugly.

  Burl popped another couple of cookies in his mouth, not certain how long he would have possession of the box or the favour of this changeable character. He looked away.

  “Och! You look flustered, my wildeskind.”

  “I’m kind of lost,” said Burl.

  “Ah, well, that makes two of us, old chap.” The baron’s accent had shifted suddenly to that of a British gentleman. “At least I had every intention of being lost. But now it seems you’ve found me out. Bearded me in my lair, as it were, what.”

  Burl stared at the man. “What happened to the baron?” he asked.

  “What a remarkable boyo,” said the man. “I have very adeptly adopted—say that quickly, three times—the disguise of Sir Chauncey Cakebread, eminent musicologist and rocketeer.”

  “Oh,” said Burl again. This was hard to keep up with. It was also, somehow, embarrassing. Burl had never been paid so much attention in his life. He was drowning suddenly in attention. He could not look up. He ate another cookie. The pause lengthened. He stole a glance at the man, hoping he hadn’t hurt his feelings, wondering if he should have clapped again.