The Lost Chord: Installment 36

...continued from the previous installment of "The Lost Chord," (my musical parody of Dan Brown's “The Lost Symbol") in which Dr. Dick & LauraLynn have been captured by the villain Tr'iTone who now prepares the next stage of their interrogation. This scene includes a parody of the Interview with the Devil from Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus" by way of the chess game in Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal."

(If you are new to “The Lost Chord,” begin your adventure, here.)

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“You can't just leave him in there!” LauraLynn screamed. “Okay, okay, I'll tell you what I know about the statue, just STOP THE MUSIC!”

But the great tattooed hulk just stood there and laughed. “Your brother should've been such a push-over. Are your heels really that round?” He picked her up and placed her, not very gently, in a chair and roughly tied her wrists to its arms, slapping her across the face at the first sign of resistance.

“Where do you have Robertson?” she spat out, trying to look around. “Is he down here, too?”

“And how are things at Verdi Square?” He looked at her solicitously, the way someone might pity a lobster before throwing it into a pot of boiling water.

“Well, for one thing, it's crawling with ICA agents – we had no choice, once they'd caught up with us.”

“So what good does knowing what the Verdi-in-a-box clue means?” He picked up the Beethoven statue as if he were about to club her with it.

“Uhm... well, I really don't know – there was a line beneath it that indicated the upper right-hand corner and said 'Falstaff enters here.' That's...”

“...not enough, I'm afraid,” he whispered, his face threateningly close to hers. “And what, exactly, does this mean, hmmm?” He held the base of the statue up in front of her.

She pulled her head back in order to see it more clearly without her reading glasses and it slowly came into focus under the strange light that enveloped them.

“But... what the hell is that?”

She thought she was looking at some kind of perverted Rubic's Cube, a large complex-looking grid, a hodge-podge of symbols or parts of symbols that needed to be re-ordered somehow in order to make some sort of sense.

[In the best of all possible worlds, there would be a really nifty graphic to insert here, but for reasons beyond this Luddite's control, that is not possible at the moment...]

A large square, twelve squares wide and twelve squares deep. But an epic piece of visual gibberish. It looked like the notation for a freakish piece of 'new music' – at least as far as the 1950s might've been concerned – but without the key to help anyone figure out how to perform it. This must be similar to what traditionally trained musicians were faced with the first time they saw scores for Earle Brown's “Available Forms” or the "moment" notation of certain piano pieces by Stockhausen.

“Well, it's on the bottom of your statue – so, what does it mean?”

There it was: an image that concealed the idea.

“It means I hadn't thought to look there before...” She turned her head away.

“And you call yourself a scientist...” He pushed her into another of the small black-painted rooms and locked the door.

- - - - - - -

Ah! And then there was light! Blinding light and weirdly orange, but at least it was light. The door to his cubicle – or whatever you'd call this – opened quickly and the boxer-clad tattooed hulk just as quickly filled the space. Without more than a curious glance, this savage looking man carried in with him another chair and a small table. He shut the music off – mercifully – and then, once he'd placed the statue of Beethoven on a near-by shelf, turned on the light switch and shut the door. The light slowly glowed into existence – one of those compact fluorescents: nice to know he may be a maniac but at least he's an eco-friendly maniac – and proceeded to set up between them, of all things, a chess board.

Pretty extreme measures to find a chess partner!

“Where's LauraLynn – is she okay? And Robertson! Where do you have him – is he okay?” My voice died in the air between us.

As I looked around, I noticed the walls were painted black but you could still it was basically one of those pre-fabricated modular sound-proofed broadcast studios or practice rooms. That would explain it: the next best thing to a sound-deprivation chamber!

He appeared to ignore my questions. “I may not be a very good chess player but I still like to play a game now and then, especially when I have a worthy opponent available.” He sounded downright cordial, a significant dissonance considering his appearance.

“I'm afraid I'm not going to prove a very worthy opponent for you – I haven't played chess in years.”

“But you are familiar with its basic rules, no?” He was trying not to sound disappointed and he certainly didn't look the type I'd disappoint willingly.

I spread out the fingers of my hands, taped at the wrists to the arm of the chair as I looked down and realized we were wearing matching boxers – sweet....

“Of course, how rude of me,” he added politely, then, leaning over the chess board, ripped the tape off with quick, violent gestures. I tried not to scream.

“Where is Robertson – the security agent told us she'd found him and he was okay. At least, that's what she said before you killed her.”

“Oh, no, unfortunately, you see, she was already dead when you called.” He then did a perfect imitation of the voice I'd heard on the phone. “I had no other way of enticing you into my lair.” Noting my surprise, he added “I am a man of many talents, I assure you – mimicry is only one of them.” He laughed a laugh that clearly did not belong to either the security agent or the charming assistant, Mr. Zeitgeist.

He handed me two pawns – one white, another black. “Will you do the honors?”

I shuffled them around in my hands and then held them out in clenched fists. It hurt to move.

He tapped my left hand which I opened to reveal the black pawn.

“Ah, good. Black, they tell me, is my best color.” He smiled and turned the board so the white pieces faced me. “In case you've forgotten, that means you begin.”

Not knowing where else to start, I merely pushed the pawn in front of my King forward two squares. He did exactly the same on his side: they now faced each other in the center of the board. My next step, I figure, I should take a little more time with, though I didn't know why. What I couldn't figure out was why we were playing chess in the first place!

“So,” he began, “you're probably thinking I should be up at Verdi Square, walking into the ICA's trap, right?”

“Uhm, no, actually, that hadn't crossed my mind.” But now that you mention it...

“This portal that Robertson referred to – refers to,” he corrected himself – “is probably not going to be underneath the statue of Verdi at 73rd & Broadway. You probably are thinking it's more likely hidden in, say, the 'Level Club' on the other side of 73rd, next to the Ansonia.”

“Uhm, no, actually, that hadn't crossed my mind, either. I don't even know what the 'Level Club' is...”

“Never mind – it's not important, just something built by a secret society for the edification of other elite members of their secret society. Sounds enticing, I know, but I don't think the Masons would be very interested in the 'Old Secrets' of a bunch of dead composers, as secretive and elitist as they might be, too. Other people might, for whatever reasons, be interested in Masonic mysteries, I guess, but not me. Your move, by the way?”

So I took my King's Bishop and moved him out to c4, thinking he would move his bishop out to a face-off in c5 but instead he moved his King's Knight out to f6. I had no idea what to do next but I knew enough to realize if I just started moving pieces around for something to do, the game would be over more quickly than I'd like. The quality of life might not be the greatest but at least it was better than sitting in the dark listening to whatever that god-awful music had been. I needed to think more about what his next move would be, preferably on the chess board – I tried not to think about what his next move might be, once the game was over.

“But it is a shame how, in this country which can't hold a candle with Europe except in its pretense to being a civilized society, it has let the Arts – and I say that with a Capital A – practically collapse into non-existence or at least a decidedly more comatose state, shall we say, close to non-existence. What is the first thing to go when governments need to find a little money to cut from their budgets? The Arts, of course!"

I cautiously moved the Queen's pawn forward a block. He countered with the pawn moving into c6.

“It's pathetic that one of the major attributes of human civilization has become so cheapened, the discussion is more about how 'relevant' classical music is to today's world rather than how powerful it can be to help preserve the human soul against everything that strives to tear it down! It's not how 'relevant' classical music is to politics or pop culture – it's fuckin' ART, man: it is its own relevance!”

The tones of voice in these few lines quickly fluctuated between the cultured, friendly voice of Zachary Zeitgeist through the genteel conversation of the dead security agent to the roaring taunts of a post-adolescent rabble-rousing street demonstrator.

If I was supposed to be concentrating on my next move, he was doing a very good job of assuring what I already knew: that I would lose so pathetically, he would be even more furious at having wasted his time and therefore concoct an even more gruesome death for me. Would there be enough time for Buzz to show up, realize what's happening, call the police and have them rescue us? How long can I prolong this game before he starts getting wise to me?

“And then there was that new Tosca at the Met – had you seen that?”

I meekly responded, “I'd read enough about it to know that...”

“I mean, where in society today is the composer? And I really mean a Composer with a Capital C who earns the respect Beethoven or Wagner did in their times? Who is this movie director – pth! – who comes along and decides to ignore some of the basic precepts of the piece as Puccini wrote it simply to fulfill his own insufficient and insignificant viewpoint? I mean, what bloody theater person would have replaced what Puccini wrote at the end of Act II with that?”

After a moment of silence, he broke in again. This time the voice was smarmy sounding. “No, it's time, dear listener, that the composer return to the Center of the Universe. Ah, but I forget, Dr. Dick, I understand you call yourself a composer?”

Without waiting for a response, he just started to laugh. I noticed how the chords tattooed across his chest seemed to transpose themselves up a whole step as his muscles quaked with the laughter.

“No, I mean we need real composers who have the strength of vision, the self-respect for their own integrity and those with not just talent but true, unmitigated genius – freakin' GENIUS, I say – who can put the focus back where it belongs, not on the performer or the conductor or, God forbid, some film person turned opera director – on the COMPOSER. That's something Robertson Sullivan could never do, and you – pfft! – spare me... Are you going to move sometime tonight, yet?”

Trying to pretend I knew what I was doing, I moved the Queen's bishop over to g5. Without batting an eye, he moved a seemingly innocuous pawn to h6. I had expected something flashier.

“Even in the schools, if they don't eliminate music from the curriculum, they eviscerate it to the level of an hour's worth of entertaining baby-sitting. Rather than acquainting their students with real music, they offer them arrangements of pop songs so they can dance and shout, the same music they hear on the radio and TV so that it becomes – here's that word again – a relevant experience! Even pop music, for what it's worth, has lost its soul – it's all about commercialism. A song is judged by how good a video it makes. And yet people who program classical music – like they do on a very small fraction of the radio dial – insist that listeners don't want to hear any vocal music even though 99% of all popular music seems to be vocal music... oh, and God forbid they should hear anything that might be the least bit new or unfamiliar to them, dare I use the word 'challenging' to stretch their experience and make them a more well-rounded individual expanding their awareness of the world around them or of the great heritage of the past. Is it so bad to actually learn something or should you just sit there and nod along with the rhythm, becoming bored if it goes on too long or doesn't have a good enough beat to it?

“People in power,” he continued, becoming increasingly hostile, “forget what power Art can have in each of us, and they do so at.. their... peril.”

After lengthy consideration, I moved my bishop from in g5 to f6 and scored the first 'take' of the match, picking up his knight with as little ostentation as possible though I felt pretty good about it: the journey was only now just beginning.

“As, apparently, do you,” he said, moving his Queen out to take my bishop. His response came as quickly as if he'd made up his mind five minutes ago what he would do, anticipating which of any possible moves I might have decided to make. I forgot how crucial it was to think not only of this and the next move but of any potential move even further down the line. Out of practice, strategic thinking was not my best attribute, especially with him jabbering all the time.

He now continued without interruption in a calmer, more aristocratic vein. “Chess, you know, is an ancient game: the sport of kings they used to call it. It's a war game straight out of the Middle Ages' feudal society and yet it is virtually unchanged today despite its popularity among the less than aristocratic classes. Now what 'relevance' does chess have to our modern society, this medieval war game which can be so easily replaced by the violence and technical ingenuities of a modern computer's game like... oh, say, Warcraft? And does anybody in the chess world run around opining the inevitable demise of the game because it lacks relevance in the modern world? What do you think of that, hmmm?"

After less hesitation than usual, I moved the Queen's knight out to c3.

“Apparently, not much.” He moved another pawn nonchalantly, this one two spaces into b5.

“Art,” he continued without dropping a beat, “is always striving for the perfection of form – or so Plato tells us. It imitates reality – that's what makes it relevant – but reality is only an imitation of the ideal. People say art cannot express emotions or it merely imitates the emotions, giving us musical experiences which evoke certain automatic responses. Considering everything both chronologically and ontologically, Plato and his followers would have us believe that once we have produced a kind of 'World Soul,' we come to the body within that soul, united center-to-center – how do the Greeks say it, hmmm? meson mesêi, is that it? Or as the Hindus express it, how the soul produces and informs the body – Parusha, the Universal Cosmic Male, informing Prakriti, the 'Mother Nature' of Creation, so that what happens above is comparable to that which happens below.” Here, he made sweeping gestures with both hands. “But that, of course you know, can be understood in the broadest sense as nothing more than a dimension of Being itself, right?”

Looking at the simplicity of his moves so far, I pulled my remaining bishop back to b3, though I wasn't really sure why. Again, my adversary quickly pushed his far-right pawn forward two spaces.

“The problem with Art – as with philosophy and religion in general – is that there is essentially no other way to arrive at Truth than through some free exchange of ideas, however it leaves the people like you and me – well, like you, any way – vulnerable to deception and manipulation by those in power, even in what we might call a Free Society. There are no 'absolutes' in Art: what one person sees in a painting or hears in a symphony may have nothing in common with what the person next to him sees or hears. How can you take sounds” – again he gestured in the air with his hands – “and transform these into some kind of physical notation for a performer to read – or interpret – that doesn't in some way stray from what the composer may have had in mind? It is a question of the power of idea abrogated by the power of the image which...”

“Just like the argument in Schoenberg's Moses und Aron," I interjected half-heartedly, as if I were not really listening and losing patience with his on-going diatribe.

“Indeed. Or for that matter, thinking of commercial media or political propaganda. Where is the discernment the Fine Arts are supposed to teach us? Why is there 'American Idol'?”

This exchange, if one could call it that, reminded me of the psychodynamic approach Freud had proposed to the understanding of the origins of creativity, that it arose as a result of man's frustrated desires for fame and fortune, not to mention love. The energy that had been tied up previously in this frustration, this emotional tension became sublimated into creative activity. Though Freud later retracted his ideas about this, this maniac sitting across from me certainly was doing his best to fit the image.

“In the end, it is Art, Faith and Mankind combining together that somehow symbolizes the limitless human potential that leads to Hope, the power that Art can unleash, that all-assuaging balm that consoles, inspires, heals, that holds us together – our civilization!” He took a bow as if I had applauded him.

My pawns were definitely being underutilized and so I decided to open my front line by moving my far left pawn out into a3. The longer I could draw this out, the better chances I had of surviving the match.

“We can't even come up with terms to attempt to define these ideas and images and even when we do, we can't keep them straight over the eons. Take 'sophism,' for example. To the Greeks, sophistēs meant one who 'does' wisdom, who makes a business out of being wise – in other words, teachers of philosophy. But today, 'sophism' means a confusing or illogical argument intended to deceive someone. But of course, our attitude towards philosophers today would probably mean it's pretty much the same thing...” He nodded his head in self-agreement as he let the thought trail off rhetorically.

It was not that he paused to think about his move while saying this: it was more as if he hadn't realized I'd already moved. His King's Bishop now entered the fray. He placed it quickly in c5 and mockingly titled his head to his right when he looked up at me.

“I mean, where is the logic in that?” He folded his hands in front of him, patiently waiting for my next move. “For instance, the problem with pure atonality – or shouldn't we be calling it pantonality, really – is that it lacks any sense of reference, not just a point of resolution. (Okay, I admit: let's say people who have problems accepting what they think of as 'atonality.') But by removing the magnetic pole of tonality, they are lost without a compass. Now, while you can fight all you want against the pull of tonality's magnetic power – and so much great music does this quite dramatically – you are merely thrashing about in the air with nothing to react to, nothing to oppose you. And, rudderless, you bounce adrift from one punch after another.”

“I've often thought,” I said, throwing myself into the argument more confidently, here, “that if you took the best underlying qualities of tonality and applied them to a freely chromatic style that could absorb the traditional concepts of tension and release, you would have a more systematized approach to writing with all twelve tones – not in a serial sense but not in an entirely 'atonal' sense, either.”

“True,” he said without seriously contemplating what I'd said, “everything can be viewed through the philosophical conflict and resolution of the Dialectic except, having been invalidated by its adoption to Marxist and Communist principles, it's no longer seriously regarded – a musical version of Evolution, if you will – one that can itself be expressed in an on-going dialectic formula. Isn't the problem one of the constant conflict of opposing viewpoints never leading to any kind of perfective resolution since that really becomes an unobtainable goal, every resolution becoming a new contradiction that never ends?”

“But did it matter,” I pretended to counter, “since the idea – at least stylistically – was to come up with a solution for 'now' since no matter what we decided to do today, the next decade, the next generation would in turn come up with a new antithesis to prolong the cycle, anyway?”

Without any fanfare, I placed my King's Knight in f3. Though it was directly in line with his Queen, it was also protected by a lowly pawn. I began wondering if maybe it wouldn't be better just to get this over with when he just as quietly nudged another pawn into d6.

“Of course, the Jains use a construction that deliciously describes statements like this as 'maybe it is, maybe it isn't' as well as 'maybe it's indescribable.'” Again, he laughed, adding “That's enough to blow the cerebral cortex of any Western brain mired in logic.”

Figuring I should start loosening things up behind my front line, I slipped my Queen into d2 and he immediately swept his Bishop into e6. Suddenly, I saw that I could take that bishop with my own bishop back on b3 so I quickly did that and he just as quickly took my bishop with his pawn in f7 which I had completely overlooked. So far, it was the fastest two moves of the game and while I had managed to take a knight and a bishop of his, he now had both my bishops. Still, the casualties were rather light and the game was not about who ends up inflicting the most casualties.

Placing my newly captured bishop to the side of the board, he added in a conspiratorial tone, “There is, however, a dark side to creativity, you know, as one writer put it: 'a quest for a radical autonomy apart from the constraint of social responsibility.' By encouraging creativity, we encourage a departure from the existing values that make up our society with its norms and expectations, don't we? But these are expectations society feels everyone should conform to – and yet conformity is the sort of thing that runs afoul of the very spirit of creativity. Without this need for conformity, a composer like Beethoven could feel free to no longer write like Haydn or Schoenberg like Wagner, hmm? But by stressing the constraints of these rules and orders, by rote learning and the loyal adherence to tried-and-true formulas, isn't our current approach to education, as Sir Ken Robinson argues, 'educating people out of their creativity'?”

With that, I decided to castle my King, placing it in g1, for whatever reason other than it seemed the next best thing to making up something entirely counter to the standard laws of chess completely. Not a very bold move, perhaps, but it still stopped my opponent in his thoughts, even if only for a few seconds.

“It is important,” I added, “to learn the process in order to understand why the ground rules work in the first place, but once we understand 'why' the rules are what they are, whether they work or only appear to work for conventions' sake, we can then bend and adapt or actually break them if we have some alternative to put in their place.” At this point, I saw no reason why my tone couldn't be just as obfuscatory as his.

“Ah, as the Italians say, Imparte l'arte, e metilla da parte 'Learn the craft, then put it aside.' Very good, as far as it goes. But without genius, craft is only a paradigm of acceptable procedures, just as without craft, genius is merely attempting to find some wheel that needs reinventing, no?”

I rather blithely moved a pawn into h3 and he, as if deep in contemplation moved his Knight from f6 back to d7, though he uncharacteristically kept his fingers on it while he apparently worked out several possible alternatives.

Instead of leaving it there or returning it to f6, he then very quickly traced two quick moves, first over to e5 then leaving it in f3 before announcing quite gleefully, “Check, I do believe!”

“But,” I spluttered... that goes against The Rules, doesn't it?

“What's the matter, Dr. Dick?” he asked leaning forward with a menacing scowl. “Can't you stand it when someone thinks outside the box?” I could feel his hot breath on my forehead. “You've never heard of the Warnsdorff Algorithm?”

“You're making that up – right? Wait... what did you say... Warnsdorff?”

Howard Zendler's parting comment – asking Robertson to “give my regards to Warnsdorff” – had been playing through the background of my mind like a tape loop of George M. Cohan's song, “Give My Regards to Broadway.” There's a reference in the song's second verse to the Waldorf Hotel – was that what Zendler meant and I just didn't hear it correctly? And what was the significance of that, anyway? Coming from most other centenarians, it would easily have been something to brush off and ignore. Who – or what – was Warnsdorff? And here was this brutish troglodyte also mentioning Warnsdorff.

“Uhm... I've recently heard the name Warnsdorff, yes... but I didn't know he had an algorithm.” Knowing Zendler, it would no doubt be a very complex rhythm.

My adversary, no longer sounding cordial but like one on the verge of the maniacal, held the chess piece up, shaking it in front of my face. “It is a process by which one can determine the potential moves of a knight from any given square on the board, helpful in solving the classic problem known as 'The Knight's Tour.' Does that ring any bells, Dr. Dick, hmmm?” He was now glowering at me, eyeball to eyeball, as he taped my wrists back on the arms of the chair.

Damn. The limerick mentions 'a night's tour' but it was transliterated into Greek phonetically: maybe he meant a 'KNIGHT'S' tour?

“I remember reading about the Knight's Tour when I was reading – or trying to read – Georges Perec's 'Life: A User's Manual,' which takes the reader through every room in this Parisian apartment building but basing the order of the chapters on a Knight's Tour through the building's floor plans...”

“Yes, a seemingly arbitrary glimpse in time into everybody's lives at the very moment of the tenant Bartlebooth's death!” He leaned forward more ominously, the Beethoven statue now in his left hand, almost as if he would hit me over the head with it. He swept away the chess board and the little table in one menacing sweep.

I began in a small, pale, sing-songy voice: “A knight's tour would make Dante chortle / To climb past the fourth ring immortal...”

“What the...?” He stopped and looked at me as if I might suddenly infect him with a deadly virus by my mere proximity.

“No, no, from the limerick in faux-Greek on Beethoven's back. It's phonetic and I thought it was a 'night's tour,' not a 'KNIGHT'S tour' with the silent K.” Reaching for the statue to point these out to him, I added, “and what was that strange thing on the base?” The last images I saw before passing out in his hallway upstairs were beginning to come back to me: some kind of diagram on the base that had been hidden under a green baize cover which must have popped off when it hit the floor. No one had thought to look there – except possibly Mr. Zendler. Hadn't I seen him snap the cover back on the base before setting it down?

“You saw that – and didn't tell me?”

“You were the one who wanted to play chess...”

“Your time,” he hissed, “is quickly running out.” He stood up to his full ghastly height. “Lord, I am surrounded by maladroits.” As he turned to leave, he announced he had to go pee. “But when I return, you will have figured this out – or else!”

And with that he slammed the door which, in a normal room, would have been deafening but in this sound-proofed chamber was nothing more than a dull thbbbb.

Now the question on my mind was "how long will it take a monster like that to pee?" when I should've been concentrating on more important issues.

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to be continued...
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The Lost Chord, a Music Appreciation Thriller, is a serial novel written by Dick Strawser and is a musical parody of Dan Brown'sThe Lost Symbol. It is being serialized on this blog.
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