No Names, page 16
I pretend I’m just hanging out drinking beer and not sticking around to keep my friends safe. An unasked-for guardian, to be sure. There’s something that resembles conversation going on around me, but I’m only hearing warnings from faraway.
Pete, Matt, and Bobby are still sobering up on the early morning train Daniel Beck instructed us to take. Except for hopping freight cars up to the salt mines back home, and the London Tube, I’ve never been on a train before. This one seems fancy. The compartments for six have red-leather seats and lace-covered headrests. We’re heading up the coast. It looks abstract, like a modern painting. Turquoise water bordered by a gold band of sand and a thicker band of bright-green trees. The houses we pass resemble small palaces—white, yellow, and pink stucco—perched above the water with a view to Sweden. Daniel Beck calls it a sound, the Øresund, in his note. The area looks way richer than the Heights or any place I’ve ever seen.
This fantasy view helps take my mind off the guys shooting up last night and my fear that we’d crossed some border we shouldn’t have. It’s got to be a one-time thing.
We get off at the stop Daniel wrote down and walk through a village of half-timber houses with thatched roofs. A fairy tale, except the people look yacht club. They all seem to be tall and tanned—Bermuda shorts, sailor stripes, boat shoes. The four of us, ragged and hungover, definitely look out of place, though the nobility’s too discreet to so much as glance our way.
Past the village, we go on to what in his note Daniel calls a lane, an unpaved road, narrow as an alley, brick walls on either side. Never been in a lane before, except in nursery rhymes. The lane runs behind the pastel mansions, inland a hundred yards or so. We find the address—the brass numbers arranged vertically on a post—but there’s no house in sight. From the lane a narrow trail winds down through woods. We melt into white-green shade cast by incredibly tall trees with great spreading branches and thick, smooth, silver trunks. A half-sweet scent comes up from the floor of dead leaves. A building gradually begins to appear. Not stucco, but glass. Not a palace at all, more like a suburban bank branch, except no suburb. It’s as if the windows are walls and doors or vice versa. Not the kind of place it seems anyone would actually live. A house that’s not a house. An invisible house that makes everything inside of it visible from the outside. The glittering waves of the sound can be seen right through the structure. In the center of the space a shiny grand piano appears to float. Daniel Beck is seated there, hands running up and down the keyboard. But it’s silent, the music sealed in behind the glass.
This place is everything I am not.
Bobby, all eager, knocks on the expanse of glass that looks most like a door. When it opens, classical music comes pouring out. The music distracts me so much that, for a few moments, I barely notice the woman standing there, saying hello, shaking our hands. She’s the first person I’ve ever actually met that I would call aristocratic. Daniel’s mother, obviously. Like him, tall, thin. Her graying blonde hair is coiled like a snake on top of her head. She’s wearing what my mom would call a mod dress, like a tent, with a huge abstract pattern of vines and flowers in bright colors—magenta, orange, lime green—on a white background. On her wrists clang lots of bangles, some silver, some made of glass or maybe stone. A chunk of amber set in silver dangles on a chain around her neck. Her tan face makes her light eyes all the more startling. They’re the color of liquid mercury. Her lipstick and eyeshadow look like frost. She’s how a queen of another planet might look.
She says in English only slightly stiffer than her son’s, “I am Daniel’s mother.” Graceful as a ballerina, she motions us in. “Please, wait here in the kitchen. Daniel will be finished with practice shortly.” Her greeting’s not warm, not cold, just perfectly polite. The house smells exactly like nothing.
Pete’s the only one who responds, “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Beck.” He sounds like a real gentleman.
I’m still too bothered by the music to say anything at all. Something about it that I can’t explain is getting to me. Daniel’s most definitely not just some kid practicing piano. As he plays, he looks serene and intense at the same time. Maybe that’s what’s agitating me, his—what is it, confidence? Poise? No, those aren’t right. Something more. Transcendence? I’ve never seen anyone playing classical music before, except on cartoons, or when changing channels and there’s some guy at a keyboard in tails pounding like a cartoon character. Daniel’s different, though. He’s steady, with precise movements, and yet, I hate to admit it, he plays with obvious passion. Maybe that annoys me too. His playing starts playing tricks on me. The notes swirling around the glass box create an intricate pattern that feels like it’s about to pull me into a killer vortex. I shake my head hard so as not to fall in.
It’s a blessing when Daniel’s mother starts serving tea. The tea distracts me enough. Did he ask her to do this or does this kind of thing come naturally to people like them? She pours from a sleek silver pot into sleek white china cups. The guys are acting abnormally polite, saying please and thank you like the Royal Family. It would be kind of hilarious if I wasn’t so suspicious.
When the music finally stops, I can’t believe how relieved I feel. It’s like I’ve avoided some great crisis that never fully revealed itself. Daniel comes bounding over to us, his small, white teeth glinting. He’s wearing pastel-blue Bermuda shorts with a light-yellow Lacoste shirt and on his feet are what I think are called espadrilles. Maybe he’s spiritually related to Pete after all, and the alligator is their shared totem? We’re our usual black-and-blue denim selves, unshaven mugs, uncombed hair, and, at least me, sullen.
“Good morning, fellows. Ready to set sail?” Daniel’s all alacrity, unselfconscious of the fact that, even dress-wise, he’s the odd man out.
“Dig your Chopin,” Bobby says. He really does know music. Impressive.
Matt adds, “It was smokin’.”
Something about dig and smokin’ sound so not right about classical music that they’re exactly right.
“Thank you,” Daniel nods, “I appreciate that.”
Pete has slipped out of happy puppy mode and grown quiet. I can’t tell if he’s intimidated, awestruck, or what. My silence is a different matter.
“You preparing for a recital or something?” Bobby asks.
“Yes,” Daniel answers, pouring himself tea, “a tour, in fact. Berlin and Vienna in September are the big ones.” He takes a careful sip, adding with sickening cheer, “I have a lot to work on before then!”
I blow into my tea, wary as to why this apparently big deal classical guy would be hanging out with lowlife punkers such as ourselves.
When Daniel stands up, it’s apparently time for us to set off on our adventure. His mother has prepared an old-fashioned picnic basket that he calls a hamper. It’s full of wax paper packets and bottles of colorful soft drinks with unfamiliar labels. Unfortunately, no beer. Without being asked, Pete and Matt each take a handle of the basket, and the five of us walk out onto a lawn mown short as a putting green. Several huge abstract sculptures in bronze and marble dominate the yard. Like a museum. One of the bronzes looks like a female giant lying on her side. We go down a long flight of stairs made of white stone that leads to a dock where a sailboat of thirty or forty feet is tied up. It has two masts. First Movement is the name of the boat, written in gold script along its bow. All across the Øresund dozens of white sails move among the whitecaps.
“Probably none of us has ever sailed before,” Matt offers, “so just tell us what to do.”
“Thanks,” Daniel says, raising the sails, “I can manage. You fellows please just enjoy yourselves.”
We climb aboard. As a kind of joke, Matt pulls Bobby from the dock, catching him right before he tumbles into the water.
“Dick!”
Daniel has us sit two to a side for balance. He undoes the lines, trims the sails. We take off with more of a start than you’d think a sailboat would have. Pete murmurs, “This is the life.” Daniel, apparently hearing him, nods.
I’m thinking exactly the opposite. I’m thinking how much this is not the life, that this is someone else’s life, or at least it doesn’t resemble any life I’ve ever known or ever really wanted. I’m not really disappointed in Pete, more surprised. This is, after all, the guy who burned down rich people’s condos. Would he want to live in a museum made of glass above the sea? It is, I have to admit, nice zipping along with salt spray on my face, but I don’t know. Maybe I’m envious that Pete finds it so easy to enter this world. It must look hilarious from the outside, though, a prepped-out guy sailing over the waves with us punks. Like we’ve crashed his Ralph Lauren ad.
“Wow!” Matt calls out, “Never seen so many sailboats!”
Pete murmurs again, all sappy, like he’s lovestruck, “I could sail on like this forever.”
Daniel laughs, at which point Pete becomes more his usual self again. “I bet I could swim the sound!” Usual and predictable.
“A lot of people do,” Daniel tells him. “It’s not terribly difficult. The narrowest swim is about twenty kilometers north of here, right at the opening of the sound. It’s about eight kilometers across there.” He asks Pete, “Are you interested?”
“Hell, yeah!”
“The crossing point can be reached,” Daniel explains, “by going farther along on the same train line you took this morning, to the final stop, Helsingør. You can rent a rowboat there, so someone can follow.”
“Oh, I don’t need anyone following.”
“You really should. There is a lot of ship traffic, and the current can sometimes be tricky.”
“I’ll follow,” I volunteer, recalling all too clearly the San Francisco Bay fiasco.
“All right, then!” That’s Pete’s first real acknowledgment of me since last night’s show. We decide we’ll do it the day after tomorrow, early in the morning following our third and final concert here.
All of us take our shirts off. The sunshine lights up our various shades of milk. I mean the four of us, not Daniel. He’s got a country club tan. Have to admit, the sun does feel great.
Now that he’s taken his shirt off, one thing doesn’t fit the picture of Daniel I have. It’s this electric-blue dragonfly hanging from a thin leather cord around his neck. It rests on his clavicle, like a pagan cross. If nothing else, it’s hippie-ish.
“This is the life.” This time, Matt’s the one who says it.
Daniel continues tacking our way across the Øresund. Bobby pumps him for information. I’m surprised to hear he’s Pete’s and my age. He seems older, or at least he acts that way. He finished conservatory two years ago. Conservatory? Now that’s one more thing way outside my world. Maybe I’m jealous? Or is it envious? Like us, his first record came out recently, though on a famous label. A Schumann piano concerto, he tells us. I’m not even sure what a concerto is.
“Had circumstances been different, I’m sure I would have been in a band,” Daniel says.
I’ll bet. If that’s not condescending, I don’t know what is. With his sky-blue eyes he keeps looking at Pete. I bet he’s a queer.
Bobby suggests, “Maybe sometime we can all jam together?” That’s just plain embarrassing. Too naïve to be for real.
Daniel smiles—again, a little patronizing—making me wish I’d had the sense to not board this ship of fools. He maneuvers the First Movement toward what appears to be the only island in the sound. It’s small and low, with dunes of yellow sand. He steers us into a secluded dock. Not a house in sight.
We tumble out of the boat. As Daniel’s securing what he calls the starboard side to the dock, he points up a low hill, announcing, “We’ll luncheon up there.” Didn’t know luncheon was a verb. This time Matt and I lift the picnic basket—I mean hamper—following Daniel and Pete up the slope and across a field. Bobby takes up the rear, whistling the Chopin. A herd of cows like I’ve never seen grazes at the far end. They’re golden. Golden cows. It’s not hot out—not like it gets back home—but I feel hot, almost like a fever. Too much sun or the rocking boat, I suppose. We come to a group of scattered boulders. A few trees have grown up among them. Daniel stops. “Here,” he says. We set the basket down. Daniel opens the lid and lifts out a blue-and-white-checked cloth, the kind nice people have, and spreads it on the grass, the way nice people do, like we’re nice people.
Pete runs his hands over the stones. He leans in, as if smelling them. He turns to Daniel and asks in a weird, distant voice, “What was this place?”
I have no idea what he means.
“The center of the universe,” comes the answer wrapped in that polite laughter rich people have.
I have no idea what he means, either, but I’m tired, not tracking. Bobby and I sit down on opposite edges of the cloth. Daniel hands Matt a bottle opener.
“They’re ruins, right?” Pete asks.
To me, it looks like a jumble of rocks in a cow field.
“Exactly!” Daniel answers, like a teacher pleased with his student. “Believe it or not, on this spot was the most advanced observatory in the world back in the Renaissance. But for me, it’s simply the place I used to come with my girlfriend.”
“For sure,” Bobby adds, all goofy enthusiasm, “great place to bring chicks!”
Matt deadpans, “Ain’t that the truth.”
Pete’s crazy eyed as a martyr saint. He looks toward Daniel and utters this gem: “‘As far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.’”
“Where does he come up with shit like that?” Matt wonders aloud, popping a cap off a bottle of purple soda and handing it to Daniel. Matt and Bobby aren’t usually subjected to Pete’s philosophizing the way I am.
“Epicurus,” Pete manages to answer out of what’s fast becoming one of his full-blown reveries.
Waves hitting the shore aren’t quite loud enough to block their voices out entirely, like I wish they would.
Daniel adds fuel to the philosophizing fire, “And don’t we spend much of our lives trying to deny that fact by building those walls anyway?”
Pete’s brow furrows.
Bobby starts up with the Chopin again, this time blowing the tune on a long, thick blade of grass he’s pulled out from between the rocks. The rest of us go silent. Matt opens more bottles and passes them around.
A city without walls. I turn that phrase around and around in my head, probably either not getting the original meaning or distorting it. Despite my cynicism, I find myself falling into thoughts that are probably bogus, but at least they’re bringing some other self out of my petty, jealous one. I can now see that these seemingly random rocks were in fact once walls. A place to study the sky. Nice. The sky has no walls. The sky is, I suppose, a city beyond all of us. The stars are pretty much the same now as they were back in the Renaissance, and though it’s daylight, I imagine I can almost see them, can almost make out the endlessly complex architecture they create. Out among that invisible castle of stars, the five of us are all visible, and we are repeating our every breath, our every word, our every gesture, thought, and emotion, in every light-year for light-years and light-years to come, out toward wherever infinity is. And right here I can, in this very moment, almost delude myself into thinking that, at least here among these ruins, I’m seeing the truth of everything. In the leaves flickering in sunlight, in the flock of birds, wings iridescent as they fly across the sun. It’s one of those moments where you want to see or notice everything at once in order to get at the truth. And you maybe do get at it—the truth, or at least a truth—for a millisecond, if you’re lucky, but in your desperation to sustain it you wind up with only a few pitiful impressions, nothing but rubble. Then again, maybe this is true of every single moment of our lives, but we just don’t register truth or the loss of truth all the time. We can’t, or else we’d go insane.
“Could eat a horse,” Matt announces. His totally normal voice derails my inward spiral, for which I’m grateful.
The guys all lean in toward the hamper as Daniel hands out wax paper oblongs. Inside these packets are all kinds of cheese and sausage and fish, on different types of bread, all open-faced, with different toppings, such as beets and pickles, as well as a creamy spread with peas and carrots. Some of the bread looks dense as meat and nearly black, some white and airy. I nibble at a slice of smelly cheese on white bread but am feeling more tired than hungry. The air’s so clear that I’m seeing too much. I suppose that’s what’s drained me. I take a swig of orange soda, lean against a fragment of the observatory, and close my eyes.
When I wake up, the sun has shifted noticeably. Matt and Bobby aren’t too far away. They’re lying curled in the blue shade of one of the larger rocks, sound asleep. Bumblebees bob and hum above the abandoned picnic. Cicadas have begun their unnerving rattle. No sign of Pete or Daniel. I get up, scan the field, but still can’t find them. I light a cigarette and walk back from where we came. They’re not at the boat, either. A kamikaze horsefly divebombs me over and over again. I sit on the dock trying to finish my smoke in peace, but my antagonist wins, and I toss the cigarette, half-finished, into the surf and head back to the ruins.
I’m kind of out of it and kind of irritated. After what must be an hour, Pete and Daniel eventually reappear at the far end of the field, walking side by side toward us, faces turned toward each other. Their hair’s wet. They look like they’re deep in conversation. I can’t help thinking they look like a couple, a romantic couple. Just an observation. Matt and Bobby stir awake when Pete and Daniel greet me.
