The Collection (10 page)

Actually Dooley Hanks had a great and rare talent that could
have meant much more to him than his clarinet, a gift of tongues. He knew
dozens of languages and spoke them all fluently, idiomatically and without
accent. A few weeks in any country was enough for him to pick up the language
and speak it like a native. But he had never tried to cash in on this talent,
and never would. Mediocre player though he was, the clarinet was his love.

Currently, the language he had just mastered was German,
picked up in three weeks of playing with a combo in a
beerstube
in
Hannover, West Germany. And the money in his pocket, such as it was, was in
marks. And at the end of a day of hiking, augmented by one fairly long lift in
a Volkswagen, he stood in moonlight on the banks of the Weser River. Wearing
his hiking clothes and with his working clothes, his good suit, in a haversack
on his back. His clarinet case in his hand; he always carried it so, never
trusting it to suitcase, when he used one, or to haversack when he was hiking.

Driven by a demon, and feeling suddenly an excitement that
must be, that could only be, a hunch, a feeling that at long last he was really
about to find The Sound. He was trembling a little; he'd never had the hunch
this strongly before, not even with the lions and the hyenas, and that had been
the closest.

But where? Here, in the water? Or in the next town? Surely
not farther than the next town. The hunch was that strong. That tremblingly
strong. Like the verge of madness, and suddenly he knew that he
would
go
mad if he did not find it soon. Maybe he was a little mad already.

Staring over moonlit water. And suddenly something disrupted
its surface, flashed silently white in the moonlight and was gone again. Dooley
stared at the spot. A fish? There had been no sound, no splash. A hand? The
hand of a mermaid swum upstream from the North Sea beckoning him? Come in, the
water
^'
s fine. (But it wouldn
^'
t be; it was
cold.)
Some
super-natural water sprite? A displaced Rhine Maiden in the Weser?

But was it really a sign? Dooley, shivering now at the
thought of what he was thinking, stood at the Weser's edge and imagined how it
would be . . . wading out slowly from the bank, letting his emotions create
the tune for the clarinet, tilting his head back as the water became deeper so
that the instrument would stick out of the water after he, Dooley, was under
it, the bell of the clarinet last to submerge. And the sound, whatever sound
there was, being made by the bubbling water closing over them. Over him first
and then the clarinet. He recalled the cliched allegation, which he had
previously viewed with iconoclastic contempt but now felt almost ready to
accept, that a drowning person was treated to a swift viewing of his entire
life as it flashed before his eyes in a grand finale to living. What a mad
montage that would be! What an inspiration for the final gurglings of the
clarinet. What a frantic blending of the whole of his wild, sweetly sad,
tortured existence, just as his straining lungs expelled their final gasp into
a final note and inhaled the cold, dark water. A shudder of breathless
anticipation coursed through Dooley Hanks's body as his fingers trembled with
the catch on the battered clarinet case.

But
no,
he told himself. Who would hear? Who would
know? It was important that someone hear. Otherwise his quest, his discovery,
his entire life would be in vain. Immortality cannot be derived from one
^'
s
solitary knowledge of one
^'
s greatness. And what good was The Sound
if it brought him death and not immortality?

A blind alley. Another blind alley. Perhaps the next town.
Yes, the next town. His hunch was coming back now. How had he been so foolish
as to think of drowning? To find The Sound, he'd kill if he had to—but not
himself. That would make the whole gig meaningless.

Feeling as one who had had a narrow escape, he turned and
walked
away
from the river, back to the road that paralleled it, and
started walking toward the lights of the next town. Although Dooley Hanks had
no Indian blood that he knew of, he walked like an Indian, one foot directly in
front of the other, as though on a tightrope. And silently, or as nearly
silently as was possible in hiking boots, the ball of his foot coming down
first to cushion each step before his heel touched the roadway. And he walked
rapidly because it was still early evening and he'd have plenty of time, after
checking in at a hotel and getting rid of his haversack, to explore the town
awhile before they rolled up the sidewalks. A fog was starting to roll in now.

The narrowness of his escape from the suicidal impulse on
the Weser
^'
s bank still worried him. He
^'
d had it before,
but never quite so strongly. The last time had been in New York, on top of the
Empire State Building, over a hundred stories above the street. It had been a
bright, clear day, and the magic of the view had enthralled him. And suddenly
he had been seized by the same mad exultation, certain that a flash of
inspiration had ended his quest, placed the goal at his fingertips. All he need
do was take his clarinet from the case, assemble it. The magic view would be
revealed in the first clear notes of the instrument and the heads of the other
sightseers would turn in wonder. Then the contrasting gasp as he leaped into
space, and the wailing, sighing, screaming notes, as he hurled pavement-ward,
the weird melody inspired by the whirling color scene of the street and
sidewalk and people watching in horrified fascination, watching him, Dooley
Hanks, and hearing The Sound, his sound, as it built into a superb fortissimo,
the grand finale of his greatest solo—the harsh final note as his body slammed
into the sidewalk and fused flesh, blood and splintered bone with concrete,
forcing a final, glorious expulsion of breath through the clarinet just before
it left his lifeless fingers. But he'd saved himself by turning back and running
for the exit and the elevator.

He didn
^'
t want to die. He'd have to keep
reminding himself of that. No other price would be too great to pay.

He was well into town now. In an old section with dark, narrow
streets and ancient buildings. The fog curled in from the river like a giant
serpent hugging the street at first, then swelling and rising slowly to blot
and blur his vision. But through it, across the cobbled street, he saw a
lighted hotel sign,
Linter den Linden.
A pretentious name for so small a
hotel, but it looked inexpensive and that was what he wanted. It was
inexpensive all right and he took a room and carried his haversack up to it. He
hesitated whether to change from his walking clothes to his good suit, and
decided not to. He wouldn't be looking for an engagement tonight; tomorrow
would be time for that. But he
^'
d carry his clarinet, of course; he
always did. He hoped he
^'
d find a place to meet other musicians,
maybe be asked to sit in with them. And of course he'd ask them about the best
way to obtain a gig here. The carrying of an instrument case is an automatic
introduction among musicians. In Germany, or anywhere.

Passing the desk on his way out he asked the clerk—a man who
looked fully as old as the hostelry itself—for directions toward the center of
town, the lively spots. Outside, he started in the direction the old man had
indicated, but the streets were so crooked, the fog so thick, that he was lost
within a few blocks and no longer knew even the direction from which he had
come. So he wandered on aimlessly and in another few blocks found himself in an
eerie neighborhood. This eeriness, without observable cause, unnerved him and
for a panicked moment he started to run to get through the district as fast as
he could, but then he stopped short as he suddenly became aware of music in the
air—a weird, haunting whisper of music that, after he had listened to it a long
moment, drew him along the dark street in search of its source. It seemed to be
a single instrument playing, a reed instrument that didn't sound exactly like
a clarinet or exactly like an oboe. It grew louder, then faded again. He looked
in vain for a light, a movement, some clue to its birthplace. He turned to
retrace his steps, walking on tiptoe now, and the music grew louder again. A
few more steps and again it faded and Dooley retraced those few steps and
paused to scan the somber, brooding building. There was no light behind any
window. But the music was all around him now and—could it be coming up from
below? Up from under the sidewalk?

He took a step toward the building, and saw what he had not
seen before. Parallel to the building front, open and unprotected by a railing,
a flight of worn stone steps led downward. And at the bottom of them, a yellow
crack of light outlined three sides of a door. From behind that door came the
music. And, he could now hear, voices in conversation.

He descended the steps cautiously and hesitated before the
door, wondering whether he should knock or simply open it and walk in. Was it,
despite the fact that he had not seen a sign anywhere, a public place? One so
well-known to its habitues that no sign was needed? Or perhaps a private party
where he would be an intruder?

He decided to let the question of whether the door would or
would not turn out to be locked against him answer that question. He put his
hand on the latch and it opened to his touch and he stepped inside.

The music reached out and embraced him tenderly. The place
looked
like a public place, a wine cellar. At the far end of a large room there
were three huge wine tubs with spigots. There were tables and people, men and
women both, seated at them. All with wineglasses in front of them. No steins;
apparently only wine was served. A few people glanced at him, but
disinterestedly and not with the look one gave an intruder, so obviously it was
not a private party.

The musician—there was just one—was in a far corner of the
room, sitting on a high stool. The room was almost as thick with smoke as the
street had been thick with fog and Dooley's eyes weren't any too good anyway;
from that distance he couldn't tell if the musician's instrument was a clarinet
or an oboe or neither. Any more than his ears could answer that same question,
even now, in the same room.

He closed the door behind him, and weaved his way through
the tables, looking for an empty one as close to the musician as possible. He
found one not too far away and sat down at it. He began to study the instrument
with his eyes as well as his ears. It looked familiar. He'd seen one like it or
almost like it somewhere, but where?

“Ja, mein Herr?
^"
It was
whispered close to his ear, and he turned. A fat little waiter in lederhosen
stood at his elbow. "Zinfandel? Burgundy? Riesling?
^"

Dooley knew nothing about wines and cared less, but he named
one of the three. And as the waiter tiptoed away, he put a little pile of marks
on the table so he wouldn't have to interrupt himself again when the wine
came.

Then he studied the instrument again, trying for the moment
not
to listen to it, so he could concentrate on where he
^'
d once seen
something like it. It was about the length of his clarinet, with a slightly
larger, more flaring bell. It was made—all in one piece, as far as he could
tell—of some dark rich wood somewhere in color between dark walnut and
mahogany, highly polished. It had finger holes and only three keys, two at the
bottom to extend the range downward by two semitones, and a thumb operated one
at the top that would be an octave key.

He closed his eyes, and would have closed his ears had they
operated that way, to concentrate on remembering where he'd seen something very
like it. Where?

It came to him gradually. A museum, somewhere. Probably in
New York, because he'd been born and raised there, hadn't left there until he
was twenty-four, and this was longer ago than that, like when he was still in
his teens. Museum of Natural Science? That part didn't matter. There had been
a room or several rooms of glass cases displaying ancient and medieval musical
instruments: viola da gambas and viola d'amores, sackbuts and panpipes and
recorders, lutes and tambours and fifes. And one glass case had held only
shawms and hautboys, both precursors of the modern oboe. And this instrument,
the one to which he was listening now in thrall, was a hautboy. You could
distinguish the shawms because they had globular mouthpieces with the reeds
down inside; the hautboy was a step between the shawm and the oboe. And the
hautboy had come in various stages of development from no keys at all, just
finger holes, to half a dozen or so keys. And yes, there'd been a three-keyed
version, identical to this one except that it had been light wood instead of
dark. Yes, it had been in his teens, in his early teens, that he'd seen it,
while he was a freshman in high school. Because he was just getting interested
in music and hadn't yet got his first clarinet; he
^'
d still been
trying to decide which instrument he wanted to play. That
^'
s why the
ancient instruments and their history had fascinated him for a brief while.
There'd been a book about them in the high-school library and he
^'
d
read it. It had said— Good God, it had said that the hautboy had a coarse tone
in the lower register and was shrill on the high notes! A flat lie, if this
instrument was typical. It was smooth as honey throughout its range; it had a
rich full-bodied tone infinitely more pleasing than the thin reediness of an
oboe. Better even than a clarinet; only in its lower, or chalumeau, register
could a clarinet even approach it.

And Dooley Hanks knew with certainty that he had to have an
instrument like that, and that he
would
have one, no matter what he had
to pay or do to get it.