Serpent Mage

  “I think you have some interesting things to talk about, don’t you?” Harvey continued.

  “If you have an open mind,” Michael said.

  “Uh-huh,” Harvey grunted emphatically. “Keep me in the real world, okay?”

  “No guarantees,” Michael said.

  “I have my instincts to rely on,” Harvey said softly. “They don’t fail me often. What they tell me now worries me. Should I be worried?”

  Michael waited for a moment before answering. Eventually, Harvey would have to know. Dreams spilled into the real world. Divide between fuzzing all too rapidly.

  “Yes,” Michael said.

  “I can see it’s going to be a cheerful week,” the lieutenant said. “I’ll get back to you in a couple of days. Sooner, if anything new comes up.” Michael deposited the receiver on the hook. Logically, Harvey should question him as soon as possible. But the lieutenant was postponing unpleasantness. Michael couldn’t blame him for that.

  He walked up the stairs, pulled down the ladder to the attic and climbed into the musty warmth. Once, sitting in the attic while Waltiri looked through boxes of old letters and memorabilia, Michael had felt as if time had rolled back or even ceased to exist; nothing had changed there for perhaps forty years.

  The attic still seemed suspended above the outside flow. He idly opened the drawer of a wooden filing cabinet and leafed through the papers within. So much accumulated within a lifetime...reams of letters, piles of manuscripts and journals and records...

  He pulled out folder after folder, peering inside. Several letters from Arnold Schönberg, dated 1938; he put those aside for later reading. Schönberg had been a composer, Michael remembered; perhaps the letters mentioned the concerto.

  Then he found the Stravinsky oratorio manuscript. Stravinsky had composed The Rite of Spring early in the century, and Disney had set the work to dying dinosaurs. Every adolescent knew Stravinsky.

  Holding the oratorio was like holding a piece of history. He lightly touched the signature and the accompanying letter, savoring the roughness of the fountain pen scratches.

  1937, the letter was dated. He could almost imagine, outside, a calm bright spring day, the cars parked on the street and in the brick driveways all rounded and quaintly sleek, like the Packard in the garage; silver DC-3s and Lockheed Vegas flying in to Burbank airport, tall palms against the sky, everything more spread out, less crowded, almost sleepy...

  Michael looked up from the manuscript with a glazed, distant expression. Before the war. Days of the late Depression, easing now that Roosevelt was rearming the country.

  Days of comparative peace before the storm.

  Kristine seemed to regard Westwood as the center of the universe. She knew all the best restaurants there—“best” meaning good food on a slightly more than meager budget. This evening she had chosen a less crowded one. It was called Xanadu, which both discomfited and amused Michael. The decor was dark wood paneling inlaid with partly oriental, partly Art Deco scenes beaten into brass sheets. White silk canopies hung from the ceiling. Its fare was not Chinese food, but nouveau French, and Kristine assured him everything was very good despite the reasonable prices. “The chef here is young,” she said. “Just getting started. He’ll probably leave in two or three months; somebody else will hire him, and I’ll never be able to afford his cooking again.” They were seated at a corner table by a waitress dressed in tuxedo.

  Kristine gauged his reaction as the waitress wobbled away on high heels. “So it’s not consistent,” she said, laughing.

  “Xanadu’s an odd name, isn’t it?” he asked. “For a restaurant like this?”

  She shrugged. “I suppose they intended it to mean...a pleasurable place, extravagant, not necessarily Chinese.”

  Michael felt a strong, all-too-adolescent urge to bring up his unusual familiarity with Xanadu, but he resisted. He would not impress Kristine by being any odder than he already was.

  “Have you been reading about those hauntings?” she asked.

  “Yes. In the papers.”

  “Aren’t they strange? Like the flying saucer waves. Really spooky, though.”

  He glanced down at the side of his chair, where he had laid the envelope containing the copy of the manuscript. Time to change subjects completely, he decided. He raised the manuscript and handed it over the table to her. “I made a copy,” he said.

  She glanced at the envelope, obviously aware of the gingerly way he supported it on his fingertips. “How did it come out?”

  “You can look for yourself.”

  She took it. “It’s very clean.” She pulled it halfway out of the envelope. “I didn’t think it would copy.”

  “We’re in luck,” Michael said.

  “Thank you.” She riffled the pages, returned it to its envelope with a broad smile and slipped it in her voluminous canvas purse. Her smile changed to concern. “Are you feeling all right tonight?”

  “I’m a little nervous,” he admitted.

  “Why? Is it the restaurant?”

  “No. What will you do with the manuscript now?”

  She shrugged, an odd reaction, as if it all meant very little to her. Then an excited smile broke through her nonchalance, and she rested her arms on the table, leaning forward eagerly. “I’ll show it around the department. There are plans for a concert in the summer...July, I think. If we can get it prepared by then, perhaps we can perform it. And I’ll show it to Edgar.” The waitress returned for their orders. Michael chose poached halibut. There were no vegetarian dishes on the menu; he felt less uncomfortable eating the flesh of sea creatures but knew that a Sidhe would abhor even such nonmammalian fare.

  Kristine ordered medallions of salmon. The waitress poured their wine, and Michael sipped it cautiously. He had drunk wine only once before, at the Dopso’s house, since his return, and he had reservations about how it might affect him in his present nervous state. He did not want to become even mildly drunk; the very thought bothered him. But the wine was agreeably sweet and light, and its effects were too subtle to be noticeable.

  One evening, the soul of wine sang in its bottles...

  Baudelaire. Why the line seemed appropriate now, he didn’t know.

  “I’m starting to have my doubts about this whole thing, about putting on a concert,” Michael said, inching back into his chair.

  “Why?” Kristine asked, startled. “Aren’t you supposed to promote Waltiri’s works? Isn’t that what an executor does?”

  “I’m not precisely an executor, I just manage the estate. I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what in hell I’m doing here. I’m giving you something you can’t possibly understand—”

  “Now wait a minute,” Kristine flared.

  He held up his hand, and pointed with a pistol finger to her bag, the corner of the envelope sticking out. “When that music was written on the manuscript I made this copy from, the paper was white and pure. It wasn’t soaked in anything between that time and now. It just aged.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “No, and neither does anybody else.” He felt his frustration suddenly rise to the surface. “I’m not in an enviable position right now. I’m pulled this way and that.”

  “How—”

  “So—” He held up both hands. “Please. Just listen for a bit. You can say how crazy I am afterward. I know you’re an expert on music, maybe even on Waltiri’s music, but this is something else.”

  “I don’t understand your doubts. You think—”

  Michael’s expression stopped her. She folded her arms and leaned back in her chair, glancing nervously at a patron walking past their table.

  “You mentioned the hauntings. There’s a connection.”

  “With this?” She dropped her hand to the envelope.

  Michael nodded. “I don’t know all the details. Even if I did, it wouldn’t be worthwhile to tell you. Because you couldn’t possibly believe.”

  “Jesus,” she said. “What are you
involved in?”

  He laughed and looked up at the backlit white canopy overhead.

  “That policeman. Is he part of it?”

  “Not really. He’s like you. And my father. And Bert Cantor.”

  “Who’s Bert Cantor?”

  “Somebody who knows. Whom do I tell? And how much? You all live in the real world.”

  “You don’t?”

  Michael sighed. “For a time, I didn’t. I was missing for five years, Kristine.”

  Her brows knit. Then she leaned forward. “Because of the concerto?”

  “It’s part of the...experience. Yes.” And I ended up in a much better recreation of Xanadu than this restaurant. He severely edited what impulse would lead him to say. It was so difficult, wanting to tell the entire story and being constrained by practical considerations—belief, the impact the story might have on how she regarded him, his unease at what might seem self-aggrandizement.

  “Okay. I’m listening.” There was a look in Kristine’s eyes then that only deepened his distress. She was interested. She was intrigued. He was something different in her life, and his attitude, his tone of voice, did not reveal him to be a nut or a liar.

  Which compounded distress upon distress.

  And stopped him cold before he could begin his next sentence. “I’m sorry.” His face reddened.

  “I said you were mysterious this morning,” Kristine reminded him. “I don’t know what I meant—”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell you this much. I have been warned not to do any of this.” He gestured toward the manuscript with an open hand. “I don’t know by whom. I’m ignoring that warning, but I want you to be aware of the risk we’re taking.”

  “Jesus,” she said again, looking down at the table. The waitress in a tuxedo served their salads. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

  “Because I’m an idiot.” He touched his fork to the salad.

  “You are not an idiot,” Kristine objected, raising her eyebrows not at him but at her salad plate.

  “Then maybe it’s because I’m way out of my depth.”

  She regarded him shrewdly. “Then why are you doing this?”

  “Because I find you attractive,” Michael said, discretion in tatters.

  Kristine didn’t react for an uncomfortable number of seconds. She would not look at him directly. Her lips worked, then she smiled falsely, lifted her eyes, said, “I’m living with someone now,” she said.

  “I suspected as much.”

  “I’d like to think we’re both interested in the music.”

  “We both are.”

  “And I’d like to think you wouldn’t use all of this as an excuse, just to see somebody you’re attracted to.”

  “I wouldn’t. Not for that alone.”

  “How old are you?” Kristine asked. “I mean, really?”

  “I don’t know,” Michael said. “I was gone five years. It didn’t seem like five years to me.”

  “I thought you might be older than you said.”

  “If anything, I’m younger.”

  “I’m really confused.” She removed her napkin from her lap and laid it on the tablecloth. “And I’m not very hungry.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “You don’t want me to do anything with the manuscript?”

  “On the contrary. I do want you to...take it to the music department, look it over, get it performed. But I think you should be aware there could be trouble.”

  “Do you always cause trouble for women you’re attracted to?”

  Her question stunned him. Yes. “Not like this,” he answered. “It’s not me causing the trouble.”

  “What I think you’re trying to say is, if we play this music again, the same things will happen as happened in 1939. Supposedly.”

  “Or something even more important.”

  “And I could be sued, as Waltiri was sued.”

  “I don’t know about that. That isn’t what worries me most.”

  She seemed fascinated by the idea. “That would be...interesting. But you’re right; I find it all hard to believe.”

  “You’re only hearing the easy part,” Michael said.

  Again a pause as she bit her lower lip and searched his face intently. “Let’s talk about how you feel about me...”

  “It’s embarrassing. I’ve said too much, and I’ve said it in all the wrong ways.”

  “No. I appreciate your honesty. You are being honest; that much is obvious. And you’re not crazy. Believe me, I’ve gone out with enough crazy men...” She gazed off into the middle distance. “I like you, but there is this...situation.”

  “We shouldn’t waste the food,” Michael said.

  “No.” She picked up her fork, replaced her napkin and speared a leaf of lettuce from her salad plate. “I mentioned the Mahler letters to Gregory Dillman. He’s our department expert on Mahler and Strauss and Wagner. He’s fascinated—says that none of the letters have ever been published, which is obvious, I suppose.”

  “Yes,” Michael said.

  “He’s advising a fellow named Berthold Crooke on his orchestration of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony.”

  “Oh?”

  “Mahler died before he could finish the orchestration. Deryck Cooke orchestrated a version about twenty years ago, but Crooke has a different approach. They—Dillman and Crooke —would love to see the letters.”

  Michael said, “Cooke and Crooke. That’s funny.”

  “Right.” She smiled. “Both with an e.”

  Their main course was served. They concentrated on the food for a few minutes, though Michael was not particularly hungry. The hollowness of want inside him had nothing to do with food. His mind raced ahead, speculating, seeing possibilities he had no right to even consider now.

  Kristine, without realizing it, had set the hook by confirming Michael’s suspicions. She was not yet available; she might even deny him. That made her infinitely more attractive. So it had been with Helena in the Realm.

  “Your situation doesn’t sound good,” he said on impulse.

  Kristine twisted her fork around a fleck of parsley in a small puddle of herb sauce. “Persistent, aren’t you?”

  “I’m just interested,” he said. “Concerned.”

  “Well it doesn’t matter. It’ll work out,” she said.

  “I hope I didn’t cause any trouble when I called. I thought I heard an argument.”

  Kristine sighed and met his eyes. “You know, I must want to talk about it, or I’d be angry with you now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Michael said softly.

  “I meet the strangest men. I really do. Maybe it’s an occupational hazard, part of being a woman. My mother says most men are like wild horses. You can’t expect all of them to be Lipizzaners. But mostly I think I’m just too young to have much taste. You know. Can’t tell the good wine from the bad right off.”

  “So what am I—Lipizzaner or wild-eyed mustang?” Michael asked.

  “I don’t know.” She finished her salmon and laid the fork beside untouched broccoli spears. Her eyes narrowed, and she appraised him. “I don’t know you well at all, but you’re no Lipizzaner. You’re not tamed, and you’re not trained. Not domestic at all. I think you must be...wild but not a mustang. Some sort of fairy tale horse.”

  Michael raised an eyebrow and grinned.

  “Well, we’re going to be frank tonight, aren’t we?”

  “Okay.”

  “A white stallion maybe. Something big and lean and out of a dream. I don’t know whether you’re benevolent or... I know you’re not cruel, but—powerful. Somehow. Oh, forget all this.” She shook her head, hair drifting into her eyes. As she replaced the strands, the waitress asked them if they wanted dessert.

  “Coffee,” Kristine said. “I could have coffee. How about you?”

  “Nothing, thanks.”

  “Flying horses, silver-gray and lean. Maybe that’s what you’re like. I had a dream about that last night. Maybe I was
thinking of you.”

  Michael felt his breath stop, his insides tense, and then forced himself to some semblance of calm.

  “Isn’t that what a poet is supposed to be, powerful and ghostly inside, raise the hair on your neck?”

  He had never heard it expressed quite so well before. He nodded. But—

  ...Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings—stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again. Adonna, Tonn, had told him that.

  “So you’re a real nightmare,” Kristine said, smiling again.

  “Better than being a nerd, I suppose.”

  “Tommy...he’s the fellow I live with. We share a house with Stephen and Sue. A big four-bedroom place. We have a room and bathroom all to ourselves. Tommy’s nice inside, but he doesn’t know himself. He has no self-confidence. It makes him go off the deep end, like he has no real self-control.” She held up both hands, one clutching her napkin, and leaned her head back as if looking for the right words to be printed on the silk canopy.

  “If I left him now,” she said, “he might just fall apart.”

  “Do you love him?”

  To his distress, he saw tears in her eyes.

  “Damn it,” she said, touching the napkin to her cheeks. “You don’t know me well enough to ask such questions. Let’s get the check.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just concerned.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” she said, not unkindly. “You’re on the make. No. I don’t love him now. He’s the albatross I get around my neck for having bad taste in men.”

  They split the bill, and Michael insisted he leave the tip. He expected Kristine to say good-bye and leave with the manuscript, but instead she began walking down Gayley toward Westwood, apparently expecting him to follow. He kept pace with her. “You know, maybe we could have a big concert in the summer,” she said crisply. “Sort of the opposite ends of the early- twentieth-century German tradition—Mahler’s Tenth and Waltiri’s Infinity Concerto. Wouldn’t that be an occasion? I’ll mention it to Dillman. Maybe Crooke will have his performing version finished by then, and we can premiere it.” She led them by a brightly lighted theater front. Michael automatically glanced at the movie posters on the side of the fourplex—a Blake Edwards romantic comedy called Tempting Fate, two theaters showing David Lynch’s Black Easter, and a reissue of Snow White. The poster for Black Easter showed U.S. Army troops fighting demons around a city whose walls were made of red-hot iron.