A Pallid Wave on Shores of Night by Adam S. Cantwell

Author:Adam S. Cantwell [Cantwell, Adam S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: weird fiction, Fantastique, strange, Historical Fiction
Publisher: Ex Occidente Press (Passport Levant)
Published: 2011-03-07T23:00:00+00:00

THE KUUTAR CONCERTO

He rummaged in his coat pockets for a cigar and found instead a half-empty bottle. He cast it down to shatter upon the steps. A silent void in the crowd opened around the little scene, spreading with the alcohol stink. The great man stood tottering slowly like a statue on an undermined plinth, not meeting any eye, momentarily unmoored in his drunken shame.

There was no repairing the situation with his wife, at least not now, not after what had happened on the podium. In his drunkenness he had thought the concert was a rehearsal. A few bars into his Second he silenced the orchestra with a gesture and lit into the first cello. But for his thick, hectoring voice and its echoes, University Hall lay in shocked silence.

But as stomach-turning as the realization of his blunder had been, more troubling was the déjà vu. When had something like this happened to him before? When had he stood shamed and alone before shocked faces, with only a pile of ashes before him?

The embarrassed audience dispersed, all whispers and averted faces. He shook his great shaven head once forcefully, as if to dislodge the unanswerable question. Though the concert had finished without further incident, Aino refused to speak to him; in any case she was to return home tonight while he would remain in Helsinki and embark for Copenhagen in the morning. He sailed silently to the street, looking for another drink.

The capital received its hero into a chill, clear night. A northern sky revealed, by slow degrees, its wealth of stars.

Out of habit, he turned toward the Hotel Kamp; then he paused and reversed course toward Punavuori. No need to embarrass his friends or provide ammunition to his enemies so soon after the incident. Nowhere in Helsinki, nowhere in Finland could he be nameless, but at least in Punavuori he could walk and drink among the nameless.

The great man’s flushed gaze ranged out from below a stormy brow. In passing faces he found the flashes of recognition and evanescent thrill that greeted him everywhere in Helsinki. He had found that encounters with his fame turned the thoughts of strangers inevitably toward themselves. They grew distant-eyed while shaking his hand, as they envisioned telling their friends of the encounter or imagined how the great man’s genius illuminated, reflected, and ultimately shared so much with their own lives. He had mused that this reaction covered over the ordinary person’s unacknowledged feeling of inadequacy; tonight, in his wrath, he allowed his estimation of the worth of these ordinary people to shine forth nakedly from his ice-gray eyes.

Darkness fell. A chill wind blew off the North Sea. The streetlamps bore coronae in the crystalline air; the dark spaces between them grew as he penetrated deeper into Punavuori. Before the cold air could clear his mind, he swerved into a tavern.

In which tavern, after which glass did the man with the spectacles appear before him, unsuccessfully attempting to make himself understood over the din?

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said, I think I have something of yours, sir,” said the man.

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