Ray Bradbury. Once More, Legato

                Ray Bradbury
                http://blogs.myspace.com/mysteryal

                Once More, Legato
                1995

     Fentriss  sat  up in his chair in the garden in the middle of a fine autumn
and listened. The drink in his hand remained unsipped, his friend Black unspoken
to,  the fine house unnoticed, the very weather  itself neglected, for there was
a veritable fountain of sound in the air above them.
     "My God," he mid. "Do you 'hear?"
     "What, the birds?" asked his friend Black, doing just the opposite, sipping
his  drink,  noticing  the  weather, admiring the rich house, and neglecting the
birds entirely until this moment.
     "Great God in heaven, listen to them!" cried Fentriss.
     Black listened. "Rather nice."
     "clean out your ears!"
     Black  made  a  halfhearted  gesture, symbolizing the cleaning out of ears.
"Well?"
     "Damn it, don't be funny. I mean really _listen!_ They're singing a tune!"
     "Birds usually do."
     "No,  they  don't;  birds paste together bits and pieces maybe, five or six
notes,  eight  at  the  most. Mockingbirds have repertoires that change, but not
entire melodies. _These_ birds are different. Now shut up and give over!"
     Both men sat, enchanted. Black's expression melted.
     "I'll be damned," he said at last. "They _do_ go on." He leaned forward and
listened intently.
     "Yes  .  .  ."  murmured  Fentriss,  eyes shut, nodding to the rhythms that
sprang  like fresh rain from the tree just above their heads. ". . . ohmigod . .
. indeed."
     Black  rose  as  if  to move under the tree and peer up. Fentriss protested
with a fierce whisper:
     "Don't spoil it. Sit. Be very still. Where's my pencil? Ah..."
     Half  peering  around,  he  found  a pencil and notepad, shut his eyes, and
began to scribble blindly.
     The birds sang.
     "You're not _actually_ writing down their song?" said Black.
     "What does it look like? Quiet."
     And  with  eyes  now open, now shut, Fentriss drew scales and jammed in the
notes.
     "I didn't know you read music," said Black, astonished.
     "I played the violin until my father broke it. Please! There. There. Yes!
     "Slower," he whispered. "Wait for me."
     As if hearing, the birds adjusted their lilt, moving toward _piano_ instead
of _bravado._
       A breeze stirred the leaves, like an invisible conductor, and the singing
died.
     Fentriss,  perspiration  beading  his forehead, stopped scribbling and fell
back.
     "I'll be damned." Black gulped his drink. "What was _that_ all about?"
     "Writing a song." Fentriss stared at the scales he had dashed on paper. "Or
a tone poem."
     "Let me _see_ that!"
     "Wait."  The  tree  shook  itself gently, but produced no further notes. "I
want to be sure they're done."
     Silence.
     Black  seized  the  pages  and  let his eyes drift over the scales. "Jesus,
Joseph,  and  Mary,"  he  said, aghast. "It _works."_ He glanced up at the thick
green of the tree, where no throat warbled, no wing stirred. "What kind of birds
_are_ those?"
     "The   birds  of  forever,  the  small  beasts  of  an  Immaculate  Musical
Conception. Something," said Fentriss, "has made them with child and its name is
song-"
     "Hogwash!"
     _"Is_  it?!  Something in the air, in the seeds they ate at dawn, some whim
of climate and weather, God! But now they're mine, _it's_ mine. A fine tune."
     "It is'" said Black. "But _can't_ be!"
     "Never  question  the  miraculous  when it happens. Good grief, maybe those
damned  wonderful  creatures  have been throwing up incredible songs for months,
years, but no one _listened._ Today, for the first time, someone _did._ Me! Now,
what to _do_ with the gift?"
     "You don't seriously mean-?"
     "I've  been out of work for a year. I quit my computers, retired early, I'm
only  forty-nine,  and have been threatening to knit macrame' to give friends to
spoil  their  walls,  day  after  day.  Which  shall  it be, friend, macrame' or
Mozart?"
     "Are _you_ Mozart?"
     "Just his bastard son."
     "Nonsense,"  cried Black, pointing his face like a blunderbuss at the trees
as  if  he might blast the choir. "That tree, those birds, are a Rorschach test.
Your  subconscious  is  picking  and  choosing notes from pure chaos. There's no
discernible  tune,  no  special rhythm. You had me fooled, but I see and hear it
now:  you've had a repressed desire since childhood to compose. And you've let a
clutch of idiot birds grab you by the ears. Put down that pen!"
     "Nonsense  right back at you." Fentriss laughed. "You're jealous that after
twelve  layabout  years,  thunderstruck  with  boredom,  one  of us has found an
occupation.  I  shall  follow  it. Listen and write, write and listen. Sit down,
you're obstructing the acoustics!"
     "I'll sit," Black exclaimed, "but-" He clapped his hands over his ears.
     "Fair  enough,"  said  Fentriss. "Escape fantastic reality while I change a
few notes and finish out this unexpected birth."
     Glancing up at the tree, he whispered:
     "Wait for me."
     The tree rustled its leaves and fell quiet.
     "Crazy," muttered Black.

    
    
     One,  two, three hours later, entering the library quietly and then loudly,
Black cried out:
     "What _are_ you doing?"
     Bent over his desk, his hand moving furiously, Fentriss said:
     "Finishing a symphony!"
     "The same one you began in the garden?"
     "No, the birds began, the birds!"
     "The  birds,  then." Black edged closer to study the mad inscriptions. "How
do you know _what_ to do with that stuff?"
     "They did most. I've added variations!"
     "An  arrogance the ornithologists will resent and attack. Have you composed
before?"
     "Not"-Fentriss let his fingers roam, loop, and scratch-"until today!"
     "You realize, of course, you're plagiarizing those songbirds?"
     "Borrowing,  Black, borrowing. If a milkmaid, singing at dawn, can have her
hum  borrowed  by  Berlioz,  _well!_ Or if Dvorak, hearing a Dixie banjo plucker
pluck 'Goin' Home,' steals the banjo to eke out his New World, why can't I weave
a net to catch a tune? There! Finito. Done! Give us a title, Black!"
     "I? Who sings off-key?"
     "What about 'The Emperor's Nightingale'?"
     "Stravinsky."
     "'The Birds'?"
     "Hitchcock."
     "Damn. How's this: 'It's Only John Cage in a Gilded Bird'?"
     "Brilliant. But no one knows who John Cage _was."_
     ''Well, then, I've _got_ it!" And he wrote:
     "'Forty-seven Magpies Baked in a Pie.'
     _"Blackbirds,_ you mean; go back to John Cage."
     "Bosh!"  Fentriss  stabbed  the phone. "Hello, Willie? Could you come over?
Yes,  a  small  job. Symphonic arrangement for a friend, or friends. What's your
usual Philharmonic fee? Eh? Good enough. Tonight!"
     Fentriss disconnected and turned to gaze at the tree with wonder in it.
     "What _next?"_ he murmured.
     "Forty-seven  Magpies,"  with  title  shortened,  premiered at the Glendale
Chamber Symphony a month later with standing ovations, incredible reviews.
     Fentriss, outside his skin with joy, prepared to launch himself atop large,
small,  symphonic,  operatic,  whatever fell on his ears. He had listened to the
strange  choirs each day for weeks, but bad noted nothing, waiting to see if the
"Magpie" experiment was to be repeated. When the applause rose in storms and the
critics  hopped  when they weren't skipping, he knew he must strike again before
the epilepsy ceased.
     There   followed:   "Wings,"   "Flight,"  "Night  Chorus,"  "The  Fledgling
Madrigals,"  and "Dawn Patrol," each greeted by new thunderstorms of acclamation
and critics angry at excellence but forced to praise.
     "By  now,"  said  Fentriss,  "I  should be unbearable to live with, but the
birds caution modesty."
     "Also,''  said Black, seated under the tree, waiting for a sprig of benison
and  the  merest  touch  of  symphonic  manna, "shut up! If all those sly dimwit
composers,  who  will  soon  be lurking in the bushes, cop your secret, you're a
gone poacher."
     "Poacher! By God, yes!" Fentriss laughed. "Poacher."
     And damn if the first poacher didn't arrive!
     Glancing  out  at  tree  in  the morning, Fentriss witnessed a runty shadow
stretching  up,  handheld tape recorder poised, warbling and whistling softly at
the  tree.  when  this  failed,  the  half-seen poacher tried dove-coos and then
orioles and roosters, half dancing in a circle.
     "Damn  it  to  hell!"  Fentriss  leaped  out  with  a shotgun cry: "Is that
Wolfgang Prouty poaching my garden? Out, Wolfgang! Go!"
     Dropping  his  recorder,  Prouty vaulted a bush, impaled himself on thorns,
and vanished.
     Fentriss, cursing, picked up an abandoned notepad.
     "Nightsong,"  it  read.  On  the tape recorder he found a lovely Satie-like
bird-choir.
     After that, more poachers arrived mid-night to depart at dawn. Their spawn,
Fentriss  realized,  would  soon throttle his creativity and still his voice. He
loitered  full-time  in  the  garden  now,  not  knowing  what  seed to give his
beauties, and heavily watered the lawn to fetch up worms. Wearily he stood guard
through  sleepless  nights,  nodding  off  only  to  find Wolfgang Prouty's evil
minions astride the wall, prompting arias, and one night, by God, perched in the
tree itself, humming in hopes of sing-alongs.
     A  shotgun was the final answer. After its first fiery roar, the garden was
empty  for  a  week. That is, until- Someone came very late indeed and committed
mayhem.
     As quietly as possible, he cut the branches and sawed the limbs.
     "Oh, envious composers, dreadful murderers!" cried Fentriss.
     And the birds were gone.
     And the career of Amadeus Two with it.
     "Black!" cried Fentriss.
     "Yes,  dear  friend?" said Black, looking at the bleak sky where once green
was.
     "Is your car outside?"
     "When last I looked."
     "Drive!"
     But  driving in search didn't do it. It wasn't like calling in lost dogs or
telephone-poled  cats.  They must find and cage an entire Mormon tabernacle team
of soprano springtime-in-the-Rockies birdseed lovers to prove one in the hand is
worth two in the bush.
     But  still they hastened from block to block, garden to garden, lurking and
listening.  Now  their spirits soared with an echo of "Hallelujah Chorus" oriole
warbling, only to sink in a drab sparrow twilight of despair.
     Only  when they had crossed and recrossed interminable mazes of asphalt and
greens did one of them finally (Black) light his pipe and emit a theory.
     "Did  you  ever  think  to  wonder,"  he  mused behind a smoke-cloud, "what
_season_ of the year this _is?"_
      "Season of the year?" said Fentriss, exasperated.
     "Well, coincidentally, wasn't the night the tree fell and the wee songsters
blew town, was not that the first fall night of autumn?"
     Fentriss clenched a fist and struck his brow.
     "You _mean?"_
       "Your  friends  have  flown  the  coop. Their migration must be above San
Miguel Allende just now."
     "If they are migratory birds!"
     "Do you _doubt_ it?"
     Another pained silence, another blow to the head.
     ''Shit!''
     "Precisely," said Black.
     "Friend," said Fentriss.
     "Sir?"
     "Drive home."

    
    
     It  was a long year, it was a short year, it was a year of anticipation, it
was  the  burgeoning  of  despair, it was the revival of inspiration, but at its
heart,  Fentriss knew, just another Tale of Two Cities, but he did not know what
the other city was!
     How  stupid  of  me,  he  thought,  not to have guessed or imagined that my
songsters we're wanderers who each autumn fled south and each springtime swarmed
north in A Cappella choirs of sound.
     "The waiting," he told Black, "is madness. The phone never stops-"
     The  phone  rang. He picked it up and addressed it like a child. "Yes. Yes.
Of  course.  Soon.  When? Very soon." And put the phone down. "You see? That was
Philadelphia.  They  want another Cantata as good as the first. At dawn today it
was  Boston.  Yesterday the Vienna Philharmonic. _Soon,_ I say. When? God knows.
Lunacy! Where are those angels that once sang me to my rest?"
     He  threw  down maps and weather charts of Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, and the
Argentines.
     "How far south? Do I scour Buenos Aires or Rio, Mazatlan or Cuernavaca? And
then?  Wander  about with a tin ear, standing under trees waiting for bird-drops
like  a  spotted  owl?  Will  the  Argentine  critics trot by scoffing to see me
leaning  on  trees, eyes shut, waiting for the quasi-melody, the lost chord? I'd
let  no  one  know the cause of my journey, my search, otherwise pandemoniums of
laughter.  But  in what city, under what kind of tree would I wander to stand? A
tree  like mine? Do they seek the same roosts? or will anything do in Ecuador or
Peru?  God, I could waste months guessing and come back with birdseed in my hair
and bird bombs on my lapels. What to do, Black? _Speak!"_
     "Well,  for  one  thing"-Black  stuffed  and  lit  his pipe and exhaled his
aromatic concepts-' 'you might clear off this stump and plant a new tree."
     They  had  been circling the stump and kicking it for inspiration. Fentriss
froze with one foot raised. "Say that _again?!"_
     "I said-"
     "Good grief, you genius! Let me kiss you!"
     "Rather not. Hugs, maybe."
     Fentriss hugged him, wildly. "Friend!"
     "Always was."
     "Let's get a shovel and spade."
     "You get. I'll watch."
     Fentriss ran back a minute later with a spade and pickax.
     "Sure you won't join me?"
     Black sucked his pipe, blew smoke. "Later."
     "How much would a _full-grown_ tree cost?"
     "Too much."
     "Yes, but if it were _here_ and the birds _did_ return?" Black let out more
smoke.  "Might  be  worth  it.  Opus  Number  Two: 'In the Beginning' by Charles
Fentriss, stuff like that."
     'In the Beginning,' or maybe _'The Return.''"_
      "One of those."
     "Or-"  Fentriss  struck the stump with the pickax. " 'Rebirth.' " He struck
again. _"'Ode to Joy.'_ " Another strike.
     _'Spring  Harvest.'  "_  Another. _"'Let the Heavens Resound.'_ How's that,
Black?"
     "I prefer the other," said Black.
     The stump was pulled and the new tree bought.
     "Don't show me the bill," Fentriss told his accountant. "Pay it."
     And  the  tallest  tree they could find, of the same family as the one dead
and gone, was planted.
     "What  if  _it_  dies  before my choir returns?" said Fentriss. "What if it
_lives,"_ said Black, "and your choir goes _elsewhere?"_
      The tree, planted, seemed in no immediate need to die. Neither did it look
particularly  vital  and  ready  to welcome small singers from some far southern
places.
     Meanwhile,  the  sky,  like  the  tree,  was  empty.  "Don't  they know I'm
_waiting?"_  said  Fentriss.  "Not  unless,"  offered  Black,  "you  majored  in
cross-continental telepathy."
     "I've checked with Audubon. They say that while the swallows _do_ come back
to  Capistrano  on  a  special  day,  give  or take a white lie, other migrating
species are often one or two weeks late."
     "If I were you," said Black, "I would plunge into an intense love affair to
distract you while you wait."
     "I am fresh out of love affairs."
     "Well, then," said Black, "suffer."
     The  hours  passed slower than the minutes, the days passed slower than the
hours, the weeks passed slower than the days. Black called. "No birds?"
     "No birds."
     "Pity. I can't stand watching you lose weight." And Black disconnected.
     On  a  final  night,  when  Fentriss had almost yanked the phone out of the
wall,  fearful of another call from the Boston Symphony, he leaned an ax against
the trunk of the new tree and addressed it and the empty sky.
     "Last  chance,"  he  said.  "If the dawn patrol doesn't show by seven a.m.,
it's quits."
     And  he  touched ax-blade against the tree-bole, took two shots of vodka so
swiftly that the spirits squirted out both eyes, and went to bed.
     He  awoke  twice during the night to hear nothing but a soft breeze outside
his window, stirring the leaves, with not a ghost of song.
     And  awoke at dawn with tear-filled eyes, having dreamed that the birds had
returned, but knew, in waking, it was only a dream.
     And yet...?
     Hark, someone might have said in an old novel. List! as in an old play.
     Eyes shut, he fine-tuned his ears .
     The  tree  outside,  as  he  arose,  looked  fatter,  as if it had taken on
invisible  ballasts  in  the  night.  There  were stirrings there, not of simple
breeze  or  probing  winds, but of something in the very leaves that knitted and
purled  them  in rhythms. He dared not look but lay back down to ache his senses
and try to _know._
     A single chirp hovered in the window.
     He waited.
     Silence.
     Go on, he thought.
     Another chirp.
     Don't breathe, he thought; don't let them know you're listening.
     Hush.
     A  fourth  sound,  then  a fifth note, then a sixth and seventh. My God, he
thought,  is  this a substitute orchestra, a replacement choir come to scare off
my loves?
     Another five notes.
     Perhaps, he prayed, they're only tuning _up!_
     Another  twelve notes, of no special timbre or pace, and as he was about to
explode  like  a  lunatic  conductor  and fire the bunch-It happened. Note after
note,  line  after line, fluid melody following spring freshet melody, the whole
choir  exhaled  to  blossom  the  tree  with  joyous proclamations of return and
welcome in chorus.
     And  as  they sang, Fentriss sneaked his hand to find a pad and pen to hide
under  the covers so that its scratching might not disturb the choir that soared
and  dipped  to  soar  again, firing the bright air that flowed from the tree to
tune his soul with delight and move his hand to remember.
     The phone rang. He picked it up swiftly to hear Black ask
     if  the  waiting  was  over.  Without speaking, he held the receiver in the
window.
     "I'll be damned," said Black's voice.
     "No,   _anointed,"_   whispered  the  composer,  scribbling  Cantata  No.2.
Laughing, he called softly to the sky.
     "Please. More slowly. _Legato,_ not _agitato."_
      And the tree and the creatures within the tree obeyed.
     _Agitato_ ceased.
     _Legato_ prevailed.