Big Pulp - the magazine of fantasy | mystery | adventure | horror | science fiction | romance



 
Dutchman Django Mathijsen has written over 300 articles for English and Dutch magazines, as well as a book about the Hammond-organ. Django has been published in the Dutch SF&F magazines Pure Fantasy, Wonderwaan and SF Terra and has won the Unleash Award, the Brugse Boekhandel Fantasy Award and the NCSF-prize. Mando Vidé en het Robotbevrijdingsfront, his first (Dutch SF) novel, was published by Books of Fantasy in March 2010. “Tears in the River” is his first English fiction publication. Visit Djanjo online at www.djangomathijsen.nl.

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Tears In The River
(continued)

Chapter 6: “Play it for me, guitar devil.”

When I arrived at the 966 Muschi Bar, Tone Wheel, Broom and Voice Box were already talking with Wardrobe in the neon lights under the awning. Voice Box saw me coming. She nodded in my direction.

Tone Wheel looked at me. He waited until I stood by them. “Say, Livewire, everything I said. I was…the…uh…”

I nodded. “It’s okay. I understand and I’m sorry, too. I’m going to miss you guys as well. I hope you’re going to be a big hit in America.”

“Round Midnight.” Voice Box said. She took the microphone from Broom and sat down on her stool in the spotlight.

“The Thelonious Monk song?” I shook my head and nodded toward the crowd. “Too slow and complicated for this audience.”

“They love me,” Voice Box said. “And it’s our last night here with you. I want to do something challenging. Not for them, but for us.”

Tone Wheel played the opening. Broom caressed his snare drum with his brushes, his eyes closed.

Voice Box sang the first line in a sultry whisper.

I only needed to play an occasional chord. I felt a pain in my stomach. Did she really do this because she wanted to play that song with me? I already felt like the fourth man in their trio.

Voice Box sang the last line of the bridge of the song. Then she turned, looked at me and said: “Play it for me, guitar devil.”

She couldn’t mean that? I really had to improvise to this song? No one in this audience wanted to hear that. Surely, she knew that as well?

She put the microphone onto her lap and kept looking at me.

I was annoyed but I had no choice. Tone Wheel already went to the second chord. So I took the lead and began to improvise. After one bar I was already completely engulfed in it. No more doubts. The fingers of my left hand ran up and down the neck and my guitar sang with a warm voice, just as warm as Voice Box’s singing.

After I had played one chorus, I looked up to give her back the lead. She still had her microphone in her lap. She raised two fingers and nodded.

I played on. I could no longer see the world; I only heard the music in my heart and copied it on my guitar. My soul and brains flowed into my guitar and took me up to ecstasy, just like that night ten years ago, with that blues and that golden bottleneck.

Suddenly I heard loud banging. The music in my heart burst apart like a bubble. I looked up.

A head with bulging red cheeks looked at me with watery eyes. He had a beer glass in his right hand. He wiped his mouth. With his left he pounded onto the podium. “Hey, string picker, what is this? A funeral?” He pounded again. “Come on, tempo! We want to hear some lively music and not that graveyard plunking. Let’s party, damn it!” He turned to Tone Wheel, pointing his beer glass at him. Beer poured onto his hand. “Hey, organ grinder, throw some oars on that organ. Do you know the Radetzky March? I bet you can’t play that, can you?”

Tone Wheel looked at me helplessly. While his left foot kept playing the bass line, he took his hands from the manuals and made an asking gesture.

The man turned to Voice Box. “And what about you, you slut! You’ve already been sitting here like a bag of salt for more than half an hour. What are you doing here?” He turned to the room. Half the contents of his beer glass gushed out and splashed onto the floor. “Why are we paying so much for our beer in here? We want to see some tits, don’t we?” He turned back to Voice Box. “Show us those milk jugs! Come on, take off those rags…”

Wardrobe flew toward the man and grabbed him by the neck. “You’ve had enough for one night.” He escorted him out through the curtain.

Tone Wheel and Broom had now stopped playing as well.

I let my eyes glide through the room, past the faces of ‘Tigerfibel’ Pauly, ‘Knives’ Bodo, ‘Double Nose’ the tax inspector and a group of half drunk sailors. Their eyes were serious and bored.

“Play something fast,” Knives Bodo said.

Suddenly, I realized that I’d known grumpy faces like that for years. They always appeared sooner or later when we played something we really liked, something challenging, something to be proud of. For years, I had tried to avoid those faces. Suddenly the fear came over me that that was all that I was going to do for the rest of my life: keeping those faces happy. Suddenly I didn’t care anymore.

I looked at Voice Box, her big light blue irises looking back at me. She nodded as if she understood.

“Do you know that new song by Miles?” She turned to Tone Wheel. “So What?”

Tone Wheel nodded. “Sure. That modal ditty. No problem. It’s just two chords.”

“Eddie Jefferson has written some lyrics for it. And he sings it in breakneck tempo: around three hundred beats a minute.”

“Three hundred?” Broom sat up, his eyes lit up. He changed his brushes for drumsticks.

Tone Wheel began to giggle.

“You want fast.” Voice Box spoke into the microphone. She looked me in the eyes, grinning. “You’re going to get fast.”

Broom stepped onto the pedal of the hi-hat: more than five times a second.

“Faster,” Voice Box said and Broom stepped up the pace even further.

Tone Wheel’s left foot started to run over his bass pedals at the same pace.

Lora sung the lyrics and then went straight into a scat, making up acrobatic melodies and phrasings to the chords that Tone Wheel and I were playing. Her notes flowed out of her like an express train, always right on the beats. She hit every note and every phrase went seamlessly into the next.

At the end of her chorus she turned with a jerk towards me. I took over and proceeded the same way she’d started: making up original melody lines and note flurries. My fingers were flying. I played better than I’d ever had. I was unstoppable.

Suddenly a hand grabbed my right hand and pulled it away from the strings. My pick fell from my fingers. I looked up and saw the boss staring at me in shock.

“Damn, do you want to ruin me?”

Behind him I saw guests walking out of the place. A sailor kicked over a chair, looked at me and shouted: “I’m not musical, either. Can I play with you guys?”

“You’re chasing all my customers away.”

“Sorry, boss,” I stammered. “It’s our last night together. We just wanted to have some fun.”

“Fun? You can have fun in your own time!”

Chapter 7: It’s time

I leaned over the railing of the stern and took a deep breath. The sea air tickled my nose, the swell rocked my body. A stray seagull flew over, screaming. The lights of the MS Aglaphon reflected in the dark water that surrounded the foamy white wake behind the boat. In the distance I could see the city lights of Helgoland in the twilight.

“Aren’t you glad you came along?” Tone Wheel said.

I glanced sideways. The tips of Broom and Tone Wheel’s cigarettes lit up almost simultaneously. In the distance behind them I saw a lightning flash illuminate the thunderclouds.

I nodded. “The last few days here in the Bebop Lounge with you guys were a delight. I shudder to think that I’d almost been playing polkas and drinking songs in Bad Reichenhall with that coal beater of a pianist they wanted to team me up with.”

“It’s good to finally get some applause when we’re playing something from Parker or Miles, isn’t it?” Tone Wheel said.

I nodded. “Even if that audience only consists of two or three couples. The rest of the boat is all going to one of the bigger bars.”

“Once we’re in New York we’ll be jamming with Chet Baker and Stan Getz for audiences with thousands of people,” Broom said.

“We’ve already left Cuxhaven two days ago.” Tone Wheel gave me a smirk. “And the devil still hasn’t come to get you.”

I burst out laughing.

“It’s time.” Voice Box came in between Tone Wheel and me.

I turned to her and looked into her eyes. A squall made her long white dress and her golden hair flutter as if she were floating above the deck. The wind blew a fine mist into my face. I tasted the salt on my tongue.

Tone Wheel and Broom threw their cigarettes over the railing, turned and walked to the door of the stairwell.

Voice Box and I were still looking in each other’s eyes. Despite the dim light, her light blue irises shone. I pressed my lips together and tried to turn around to run after Tone Wheel. It was as if she held me on the spot with her gaze.

Voice Box reached out and straightened the bowtie that belonged to my stage outfit.

I heard the echoing sound of Tone Wheel and Broom who opened the metal door and stepped over the sill.

“Are you coming?” Broom said.

I tried again to turn and run after them. Voice Box however clenched my face between her hands. Her thumbs stroked my cheeks. “Helgoland still belongs to Germany. We’ve just now left Germany’s territorial waters.”

A wave of fear swept through my body.

Behind Voice Box, I saw a mountain of water roll towards the ship. The top of the towering wave foamed, curled and broke apart. It looked like the sharp, white nails of a black claw which was coming straight at me.

I closed my eyes. “It’s time.”

With a thud the wave swept me from the deck. All air was knocked out of my lungs. It was like being hit by a truck.

I felt the icy water swirling around me. I opened my eyes wide. Dimly I saw a jet black shadow above me, cleaving through the water with two churning propellers at the rear. The dull thumping of the ship’s engines pounded through the water. The lights of the ship signed its silhouette as if it were carried by the light.

I tasted salty water in my mouth. My lungs gasped for air. I shook my head. I pressed my tongue against my palate to prevent myself from sucking in water. With my arms and legs I beat around me. I pushed off and tried to work my way up. But there was nothing that I could push off against.

Above me the silhouette of the ship was getting smaller. I struggled but was helpless. It was as if the whole world around me was sinking into a vortex.

I couldn’t hold back anymore. I opened my mouth. My lungs sucked in the icy water with all its force. It was as if a fist of water was rammed into my throat. I saw a stream of bubbles shooting up. The last bit of air from my lungs. I clawed at it with my arms. But I was sucked down deeper and deeper.

My lungs were tightening. It felt as if the fist of water was rammed up and down my throat. Again and again.

The silhouette of the ship became vaguer. I couldn’t feel my arms anymore and saw their movements getting slower and smaller. I made a supreme effort, but my arms just moved less and less.

White sparkles whirled before my eyes. White patches flashed past. They were wings, fins…Voice Box’s dress. Her body seemed to radiate white light. I saw her coming at me, her hands outstretched the same way as that darkly red boy had handed me my guitar. I tried to reach out and grab her hands. My eyelids became heavy and fell shut.

Chapter 8: On top of the rock

Heat flowed from my mouth through my body. Slowly it drove out the icy cold. I opened my lips. Suddenly it was as if all the cold water was sucked from my lungs and hot water was forced into them.

I opened my eyes and looked at Lora’s light blue irises. I felt her lips slide over mine. I relaxed my tongue and felt Lora’s tongue in the salt water sliding over mine. The feeling came back into my arms: Lora hugged me. Where she touched me, I felt her nurturing warmth.

When I was warm through and through, she let go of me. Her body shining in the pitch black water was all I could discern. Her hair and fins were slowly waving through the water. She smiled and beckoned me with her right hand. With her left she grabbed hold of me.

She gave a tug on my arm. Suddenly the water started to flash past.

Lora let go of my hand. The water in my mouth tasted sweet. She looked at me but said nothing. Yet I understood every word.

I nodded. Yes, the river was wonderful.

She swam up, I followed her. I broke through the surface: an explosion of water. I vomited the water from my lungs and took a slow breath. Fresh air filled my lungs. No Lysol, smoke, sweat or alcohol. I held my breath. The urge to breathe was gone. I saw the moon and the stars through the hole in the clouds above me.

The murmur of the river sounded bright after the muffled sounds under water.

Lora waved from the shore, under a rock that towered above the water.

I swam to the shore, each stroke a deafening splash.

I lay on my belly in the sand. Behind me I heard the river lapping against the shore. Lra sat before me at the foot of the rock. With long strokes she let a golden comb slide through her hair. She looked at me.

I sat up.

She was still silent, yet I understood everything.

I nodded. I had no choice, just as she’d had no choice. This would be my new home, my new gig, together with her for all eternity.

She grabbed my hand and lifted me into the air, more than a hundred meters up to the summit of the rock.

To the left, to the right and in front, the black river wound around the rock, deep beneath me. The ribbon of water disappeared into the distance between the hills. Forests stood out against the moonlight. Shreds of mist floated through the river valley.

On the other bank I saw city lights and camp fires.

Lora pointed to the left. The lights of a river boat.

I nodded.

She pointed to a golden guitar against a moss-overgrown rock.

I picked up the guitar, sat on the rock and played the dramatic opening chords. My guitar howled as if the world were coming to an end.

Lora sang the first line of “Cry Me a River”. Her golden hair waving, her singing sailing down with the wind. But our rendition somehow, imperceptively, morphed into a poem by Heinrich Heine which I, like every German child, had sung in school.

“Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,” she sang to my guitar strings, as people far below us began to scream.

“Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe ergreift es mit wildem Weh,” she continued to the distant accompaniment of a dull thud, metal creaking, squeaking and the sound of breaking glass. A wailing ship’s horn joined in as she and I reached the final line.

“Und das hat mit ihrem singen die Lorelei getan.”

 

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