The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [101]
AS LUCIEN PONDERED his father’s news, he alternated between states of awe at the implications of such a vaccine for society at large and something closer to anxious hilarity as he imagined how much more intense Tristan’s longing for death might be if he were 150 or 200 years old. He understood this latter reaction to be mostly a function of his nerves, but rather than fixate on it—to the detriment of his performance—he reminded himself that the most likely outcome of his father’s work would be the indefinite continuation of the experiments; as Guillaume had said, mice and people were far from the same, and what worked on one could rarely be trusted for the other.
The day of the premiere, Lucien slept late and ate lunch with Guillaume and Eduard. He went to the theater and by five o’clock was in costume. Thirty minutes later the houselights were dimmed; Bülow entered the pit and after a polite round of applause signaled the orchestra, which began the prelude. Lucien moved into position to wait for his cue, and as he listened to the first breath of the cellos, he could almost hear his father and dead mother talking, while in the cascade of strings that followed, he felt his heart beating in time with that of Eduard and imagined them still together in the night.
By almost any measure, it was a good and possibly a great performance, which was not to say there were no mishaps. Several times Lucien or Pelagie came in early, which resulted in cross looks from Bülow as he tried to adjust the tempo of the orchestra; then the ropes on the curtain snagged at the beginning of the second act, which led the third-chair violinist to drop his bow and cause a rather loud screech; and finally, during Brangäne’s warning, a lock of hair fell out of Pelagie’s wig into Lucien’s mouth and made him cough. When he could, he watched the audience from the wings and observed a few people inserting fingers into their ears, though very discreetly, as the rapture of their king was apparent to all. For some, it was destined to be a long night indeed, and Lucien pitied those he saw checking their watches just fifteen minutes into the piece, with more than four hours to go. There were many others for whom the music seemed to take hold: their twitches and squirms abated, replaced by a more transfixed state of contemplation, as if to be exposed to such dissonance and volume left no choice but to place a magnifying glass on their heavy souls. For those being exposed to this process for the first time, it was a trial by fire, while for those like Eduard who were better versed in the art of introspection, the piece was less disturbing than evocative of the inherent ambiguity of life.
When it finally finished, the crowd remained silent until one of the king’s men had the foresight to clear his throat, at which point the audience erupted in a display of fervor as unprecedented as the more introverted states from which they had just returned. As Lucien took his bows, he felt like his dreams and memories and aspirations—along with all the petty obligations and responsibilities, all the hopes—had been decimated; the notes he had sung just a few minutes earlier were beyond his grasp, and there would be no way—even under duress—to summon them again until some point in the future he could not begin to think about. As the applause continued, he was reminded of certain mornings in Vienna—especially after he’d just arrived—when he would wake up next to Eduard and for a little while feel sated and content, and for the first time he understood the consummating power of performance and how—as with romantic love—he had grasped this only after years of searching, of craving something he could not have described until after it was found.
29
Blue Monday
NEW YORK CITY, 2001. When Martin woke up on the Wednesday after the attacks, he turned on the radio news and confirmed that the previous day had not, after all, been a nightmare. He called his office switchboard and learned that the building was closed, and after hanging