Klarinet Archive - Posting 000291.txt from 2002/06

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] A (musical?) game
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 22:21:55 -0400

>...but in the meantime the scientist who had done the
>regression had died, taking his secret with him, and the clarinet
>teacher had retired, declaring that he had wasted his life on others.
>
>[The two clarinet players retired, and took up gardening. They still
>sometimes play their game on ICQ.]

Once in a while, the two clarinet players still visited each other in person,
though not so often any more, because they lived in different countries now,
and had begun to find that the bother and exhaustion of travel outweighed the
fascination. When they did meet, they felt almost obligated to reminisce
about their years as well-known clarinetists--"our glory years," as Hobb
referred to them in a sarcastic tone of voice that sounded forced.

They had such a conversation while sitting in the deep wicker arm chairs on
Hobb's front porch, late in the evening one April 29 a few years ago. They'd
spent most of the afternoon walking and puttering around in Hobb's enormous
herb garden, but after they'd run out of things to say about sage and rue and
which variety of rosemary survived the winter, the talk circled back, as it
always did, to clarinets. And, as always, that conversation soon grew
awkward enough to trail off into an uncomfortable silence. Freisberg's
eyelids started to droop. He did most of his gardening in a greenhouse these
days. Hobb tended his plants outdoors. He'd cleared almost enough land to
qualify as a farm, and on top of taking care of it, Hobb ran every morning.
He'd kept himself in much better shape than Freisberg, who felt . . . .

A flicker of a dream crossed his mind: stage, audience, conductor, hot bright
light, Weber, a tornado of sound, the taste of the reed.... He blinked and
sat up. Suddenly, impulsively, he said to Hobb, "Are you ever tempted to
just pick up the clarinet and get your chops back? Phone our old agent?"

"Sometimes." Then the wicker crackled as Hobb shifted suddenly in his seat
and said firmly, "No."

Freisberg said (it was easier to say it in the dark), "I'm changing inside.
Something's different. I think I do want it all back. When I was packing to
come out here, I picked up the clarinet case along with my suitcase.
Automatically. I opened the case. Then I closed it again. Then I opened it
again. I sat down on the edge of my bed and sucked on a reed for about ten
minutes with this lump in my throat like--well, I played and played until I
nearly missed the plane. My lip was chapped for three days. Oh, I left the
clarinet behind in the closet, of course, but . . . ." After another long
silence, Freisberg blurted out, "Didn't you always think there was something
strange about all that? I mean, success didn't come to us overnight. We
worked hard for what we accomplished. We played our scales and our long
tones. But . . . . Do you know what I mean?"

"What *do* you mean, exactly . . . ?" said Hobb softly.

The hair on the back of Freisberg's neck began to prickle at the sound of his
old friend's voice, or maybe it was only the cool breeze of an early spring
night blowing through the weathered latticework, where the morning glory
seeds he'd helped Hobb plant that day would soon climb almost overnight to
drape the porch in pale blue flowers and block the hotter wind of summer.
Old friend . . . . What did he know about Hobb, really? The man had never
married; never had a girlfriend or a boyfriend that Freisberg ever met; lived
alone in this cavernous old house; seemed to have no family at all--when had
any Hobb or even friend of a Hobb ever come to any of their concerts?

Freisberg said, "I could swear I lived for--oh, I don't know. Years. As an
adult. *Before* all that happened to us as teenaged boys. Before we met
that scientist--what was his name? And our teacher. What was his--? My
God, I can't remember our clarinet teacher's name!"

"Senior moment," said Hobb with a soft chuckle. Freisberg didn't quite like
the sound of that. In fact, all of a sudden, he didn't quite like Hobb. He
had never liked Hobb. Something . . . some *thing* had thrown him together
with Hobb, all those years ago. But no, that was silly, and his old friend
Hobb was standing up and stretching and saying, "Look at the time! It's
eleven o'clock, on Walpurgisnacht, no less--off we go to beddy-bye before
it's midnight and the witches start flying round Woodbine Hill. It used to
be Hangman's Hill, you know, before my ancestors bought the land and tore
down the souvenir stand and the gallows. Boogety-boogety." He cackled
theatrically and made passes in the air with his fingers, like some cartoon
wizard.

"Gallows? You're not serious."

Hobb yawned, reached down and touched his toes without bending his knees,
bobbed back up, looked at Freisberg still sitting there silently (looking
back at him and waiting for an answer), and said, "It wasn't the original
gallows. It was a ticky-tacky replica for the tourists who came out here for
the fall foliage and pick-your-own pumpkins and hayrides at Hallowe'en,
before the mill shut down and the town dried up and blew away. Seriously,
stay up as late as you like and enjoy the night air, but I'm going to bed.
Let me know tomorrow morning if any flying saucers land on the hill."

Freisberg lay awake in the guest bedroom. He lived in the city and found it
hard to get used to a house so nearly silent that from this upstairs bedroom,
he could hear the ticking of the grandfather clock way downstairs in what
Hobb rather grandly called the front parlor. Well, it probably was a front
parlor, Freisberg realized. That part of the house must be two hundred years
old, at least. Then he heard another sound: a quiet creak. Then another
creak. Then creak creak creak, the last three old wooden steps down to the
first floor landing. He didn't hear the front door open, but he thought he
heard it shut.

Freisberg got out of bed and looked out the window. Then he put on his
clothes. Under a full moon so bright he didn't need a flashlight to find the
pale streak of the path cutting through the darker vegetation, Freisberg
stealthily followed Hobb up the hill.

***

Hobb had heard Freisberg snoring, and figured his old friend was so
jet-lagged by now, after flying halfway round the world and back to visit all
his sisters and his cousins and his aunts in one swell foop, that he'd sleep
like the dead, if indeed the dead could bear to sleep on this fine May Eve
with the full moon sailing through the cloudless black sky. Nature had taken
back the top of Hangman's Hill where the clearing used to be, but Hobb had
already reconnoitered up there by daylight and knew where to find the right
spot. A few passes with his pen-light showed him the plants, less than a
foot tall this early in the year, with their drooping umbrellas of
newly-unfurled leaves covering the buds that would open later into single
white flowers with six petals each.

Hobb set his clarinet case down. It was a long case, custom made to his
specifications for his best pair of clarinets. Both of them could rest fully
assembled in there. Hobb took the trowel out of the cargo pocket of his
khakis, knelt down on the damp ground and began to dig. He loosened the soil
all around the root and uncovered its top enough to get a good grip on it.
He looked at the luminous dial of the wristwatch that he set by the atomic
clock in his kitchen, and waited. Midnight. With one sharp tug, out of the
ground came the thick root, shrieking. Hobb brushed most of the dirt away.
Oh, yes, he'd pulled himself a good one, bumpy, fat and forked, with its chub
by legs dangling a few long thready root-toes. He rubbed the top of the root
against his slacks to clean it off better. Yes, it had two little bumps up
there, like potato eyes. He shone his bright pen light on them.

One of them opened. The tiny eye was blue, with a vertical slit of a pupil,
like the pupil of a cat's eye, but a fraction of the size. The eye blinked.
Then the other one opened. This one was greeny-gold, with a horizontal,
rectangular pupil, like the pupil of a goat's eye. It blinked, too, but not
at the same time as the blue eye. Hobb noticed that when the pupil of one
eye widened, the pupil of the other eye contracted. Below the eyes, a crack
appeared, lined with tiny white teeth. The root said, "What the hell do you
think you're looking at? Get that damned light out of my face!"

"I think I'm looking at a May Apple," said Hobb with a grin. He didn't turn
out the light. "Or do you prefer Mad Apple?"

A bump between the eyes and the mouth went sniff sniff sniff. "You're a
Hobb, ain't you?" said the root. "You smell just like the Hobb what was
hanged here. And it's Mr. Mandrake to you, pal. I don't like them stupid
nicknames. And put me back in the ground and cover me up, or I'll make you
sorry."

"Oh, come off it," said Hobb. "Do as you're told or I'll make *you* sorry."
He opened up his clarinet case and stuffed the mandrake root deep inside the
bell of his clarinet in A. . . . .

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