“It hasn’t been a waste of my time. The performance last night alone was worth the trip.”
“Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it. I don’t get to conduct the variations often. It’s always a fight to get them into a program. Not big ticket sellers.”
“May I ask you a question about the variations?”
“Yes. I have a little time still.”
“What’s your theory? Do you have a piece of music you think fits?”
“No, I don’t. I don’t believe anyone will find incontrovertible proof of one particular melody being the inspiration, or overarching theme. Elgar was very familiar with the use of extended harmonies. This simplistic idea that we will find a well-known melody that is an obvious fit seems highly dubious to me. I’ve always been more interested in the other part of the riddle. The dark saying which must be left unguessed. To me, that is a more interesting mystery. I’m no mathematician or code breaker so I’ve never hoped to solve it myself. I just like to keep up on any new developments and read what others are thinking. When I play the music, or conduct it, though, I feel like I can intuit that dark saying, like it’s on the tip of my tongue. I can feel it viscerally. It’s something magnificent. There are those who think it’s some kind of mystical or occult incantation. You know that Elgar spent time working at an insane asylum?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes. He worked for a time as the bandmaster at the Worcester City and County Lunatic Asylum. He was twenty-two. The band was made up of the attendants at the asylum, not the patients of course. They played at dances that were held for the patients. It was Elgar’s first job as a composer and conductor. Tremendously important to his formation as a composer. Some people say he became close to and spent time with a particular patient—a man who had been driven mad by his experiments with magic and the occult. He was a descendent of Benvenuto Cellini.”
“Cellini? The Italian sculptor?” I strained to remember my art history. I knew I had studied Cellini. “He did the famous statue of Perseus with the head of Medusa didn’t he?”
“Yes. But he was also a soldier, a musician, and an occultist. He wrote a pot-boiler of an autobiography. Murder, mayhem, intrigue. It’s all in there. Including the summoning of demons via ritual magic. It’s worth a read. Anyway, he had a lot of affairs with both women and men and this inmate was supposedly a descendent via an illegitimate offspring. He had tried to reproduce Cellini’s experiences summoning demons. They say Elgar learned magical incantations from this patient and that he later encoded them into compositions. The dark saying in the variations would be one example.”
“Interesting.”
“Yes. But I find the idea unconvincing. As I said, I feel the power and meaning in that music and it is not something occult or evil. It’s more like a heavenly vision, a parting of curtains after millennia of darkness to reveal the sun. Don’t you agree? You heard it. You experienced it. I could tell from your face when I met you last night. It’s the reason I agreed to meet with you.”
“Yes. I think I did feel it,” I replied, struck by Benderick’s enthusiasm, the clear, almost beatific aura that lingered around his words. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. You’ve been…” I hesitated, wondering how useful the conversation had really been, “…very generous with your time.”
Chapter 8
Salamanders and Keyloggers
June 29: San Francisco
I found a public domain version of the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini on gutenberg.org, downloaded it, and began reading it on the plane. I was well into the book by the time we landed at SFO and thoroughly embroiled in the fascinating narrative. There was no way to tell whether most of his stories were truth or fiction but they were definitely entertaining and he didn’t shy away from embellishment. For example, early on he told a story from when he was five years old:
“My father happened to be in a basement-chamber of our house, where they had been washing, and where a good fire of oak-logs was still burning; he had a viol in his hand, and was playing and singing alone beside the fire. The weather was very cold. Happening to look into the fire, he spied in the middle of those most burning flames a little creature like a lizard, which was sporting in the core of the intensest coals.”
Little Benvenuto’s father called him to the basement, showed him the creature, and told him it was a mythical salamander which legends said were born from fire. He then proceeded to give Benvenuto ‘a great box on the ears’ which he explained was a trick to make Benvenuto remember the moment later—a strategy that apparently worked since fifty-eight year old Cellini remembered it well enough to add the anecdote to his book.
A light thump alerted me that we had landed. I turned off my e-reader and looked out the window. Beyond the tarmac, the bay was still and tranquil. After deboarding and making my way through the airport, I took the BART downtown and walked home along the waterfront rather than riding the crowded T train. I had arranged to meet Ashna for drinks in the late evening but I had a few hours to kill before that. I was looking forward to making some progress on the half-finished sculpture in my studio, reading some more Cellini, and maybe getting in a workout at the Krav Maga gym I frequented but hadn’t been to for months. My years of Krav Maga training had literally saved my life not long before. I shuddered, remembering the cold and silence of that clearing in the woods. It had been a close call but the walk along the bay was pleasant and soon dispelled the bitter memory of that night.
A light, warm breeze ruffled the banners at
