A Certain Music by Walters & Spudvilas Read Free Book Online Page B

And there it was.
    Both stared.
    It was indeed like a scene from a fairytale in which beautiful women in silks and laces, with glittering shoes and ribbons and feathers, stepped from carriages on the arms of equally beautiful men in black and white, with silk hats, and all of them were talking and laughing and waving to each other and pushing forward. As one they moved towards the arched door of a magnificent building whose sculpted edifice rose against the sky.
    The Karntnerthor Theatre.
    Mother and daughter stepped down also. They stood apart as the driver joined the queue of carriages that were lined up. Silk pressed against silk and feathers tickled as they entered the theatre.
    Through rose light and mirrors they shuffled to where gowns and suits were lining up to present their tickets and take their seats.
    They joined the queue, and moved in ...
    Neither spoke. This was far beyond a dream. There were no words for this. They followed an usher down the aisle in the direction of the stage; down and down the red carpet they went, right to row four. They stared at the seats, at each other. They sat, the child on the aisle.
    In front of them was the stage with its curtain of velvet. They tried to take in the mouldings, the engravings in gold leaf, the marble statues, the richly painted frescoes, the scalloped drapes ... the boxes, also carved in gold leaf, that rose at the sides and beyond the boxes, again, embossed in gold, the galleries – the child counted one two three four – five levels ... And towering above, the sculpted dome, from which three enormous chandeliers dropped on heavy chains ...
    The whole place glowed.
    The child swung around. Behind her stretched row after row after row into which people were streaming.
    There would be no empty seat.
    She turned back to the stage. A huge stage and deserted but for drums and double basses, seats and music stands ...
    The child listened. The sound was like the buzzing of giant flies ...
    The buzzing grew louder, for now the musicians had entered. Men in evening dress were filling up the stage, moving to their seats, sitting, talking to each other, making strange sounds on their instruments ...
    Next the choir filed in. Here there were women as well. And now two other men took their seats at the front and two women, one in gold and the other in blue, took theirs.
    'The soloists,' her mother whispered.
    The buzzing was fading, stuttering like flies when they die ... to nothing. To silence ...
    The child was finding it hard to breathe. She closed her eyes. She put her hands to her ears. She talked to God ...
    And now came clapping for Kapellmeister Umlauf was walking across the stage, and the man with him.
    The conductor stepped onto the podium, turned to the audience and bowed. The man stood at the far side and faced the players. He did look splendid, though smaller and somehow unimportant, like the toy in the nursery that's discarded. The child breathed deeper, harder.
    A hush louder than any silence descended as Kapellmeister Umlauf turned to the orchestra and raised his baton. The child sat forward, her heart ready to fly, to soar with the music ...
    It started slowly, the strings and the horns sang of loss, of empty nothingness ... Sounds the child hadn't heard before but as she listened, the sounds became stronger and stronger and louder and louder, they were building into a wild and terrible storm, as the drums rolled like thunder and the strings flashed like lightning across the sky ...
    And all the while the man stood facing the players and waved his baton back and forth ... And heard nothing ...
    The music changed. Now the child saw dancing. People in a circle passed lengths of flowers to each other as they went twisting and turning in and around ...
    Again the sound changed. This time the strings were singing of a great beauty like the russet glow of autumn that speaks of death. A sob rose in her throat. She turned to her mother who was weeping too ...
    And then