For a few moments after the applause, the venue seemed unsure what to do with its own voice.
Then everything started moving again. Chairs scraped against the floor, someone got up to head to the drinks counter, others approached the stage, two apprentices called out the drummer’s name and he responded by raising his drumsticks in an almost comical gesture, as if he had just finished a rehearsal rather than a concert. The bassist unplugged the cable from his instrument, but didn’t put it away immediately. He remained seated on the edge of the platform, the bass still on his knees, his gaze lowered to the strings, occasionally touching one without really producing any sound.
Zena had knelt in front of her guitar case. She didn’t speak. She carefully wrapped the cable, secured it with a dark tie, checked the instrument’s bridge, wiped the strings with a cloth, and only then put it away. Anesh watched her from Legu’s table, unable to decide whether to approach or stay where he was. A short while before, on stage, Zena had seemed so far away, part of a language he could only listen to from the outside. Now, as she struggled with a latch on the case that wouldn’t close, she became again the girl from the workshop: impatient, precise, opposed to any minor obstacle that stood between her and her time.
The drummer came over, wiping his forehead with his forearm.
“Next time, tell me first.”
“What?”
“That the last piece doesn’t end.”
Zena finally closed the latch on the case. “It ended.”
“Yes. After going somewhere it wasn’t supposed to.”
She looked up, but didn’t reply right away. The drummer didn’t really seem angry. There was irritation, sure, but also a kind of begrudging respect, as if he had to acknowledge the quality of a problem while still considering it a problem.
“You held on,” Zena said.
“I always hold on.”
“I know.”
That small concession seemed enough for him. He nodded, gathered some of the folding stands, and returned to his instrument, still muttering something Anesh couldn’t hear.
The bassist, on the other hand, still hadn’t moved. When Zena passed by him, he barely lifted his face.
“At a certain point I didn’t know where the one was anymore.”
Zena looked at him. “And then?”
He ran his thumb along the lowest string, without pressing it. “Then it didn’t seem like the most important thing.”
Zena didn’t smile, but her face changed just enough. She gave him a light tap on the shoulder with the back of her hand, a quick, almost rough gesture, and the bassist lowered his eyes again, this time to hide a smile.
Legu had watched everything without moving from his table. The dark glass was still in front of him, less full than before, but not empty. It seemed like one of those objects that, more than being drunk, serve to measure how long a person has stayed in a place. When Zena came down from the stage with the case on her back, he raised his glass slightly, not in a toast, but in a greeting that could be acknowledged or ignored without offense.
“You stretched the measure,” he said.
Zena stopped by the table. “I just kept it open a bit longer than usual.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No. You make it sound intentional.”
Legu took a sip and didn’t deny it. “At your age, I too often did unintentional things with great precision.”
Zena shot him a sideways glance. “At my age you were probably already unbearable.”
“I was unbearable in a more useful way.”
“I doubt it.”
The old man laughed quietly, without showing his teeth. Anesh listened to them as one listens to a language whose words are understood but not yet the distances. Between Zena and Legu there was no family familiarity, nor simple acquaintance from the venue. There was something more worn: a series of phrases repeated over the years, perhaps, or evenings where he had stayed at the same table and she, each time, had taken the music a little further than was comfortable to admit.
Legu turned his gaze to Anesh.
“And you?”
Anesh only then realized the old man was talking to him. “Me what?”
“You arrived with a recovery vehicle and listened to a piece that didn’t want to be recovered. I was wondering if you had any preferences.”
Zena snorted. “Leave him alone, Legu.”
“I’m leaving him alone just fine. He’s the one still occupying a chair.”
Anesh looked at the now almost empty stage, then at the wicker basket against his side. He could have said that he liked the music. It would have been true, but not enough. He could have said he didn’t understand it. That too would have been true, but not quite. He searched for a simpler phrase, and for that very reason, it took him longer.
“At first I knew where to put it,” he finally said. “Then not anymore.”
Zena stopped adjusting the case’s strap.
Legu didn’t comment right away. He slowly rotated the glass on the table, letting the dark liquid move against the glass.
“That’s an honest answer,” he said.
“That’s a vague answer,” said Zena.
“The two things aren’t mutually exclusive.”
Anesh lowered his eyes, almost annoyed by the sudden attention that phrase had created. He wasn’t used to talking about music in front of those who could play it. Or maybe he wasn’t used to it anymore. For a moment he saw his father’s hands over the wood, but the image passed so quickly he couldn’t hold onto it.
Zena was still looking at him.
“What do you mean you didn’t know where to put it anymore?”
Anesh shrugged. “I don’t know.”
She seemed about to reply with a joke. Then, perhaps because this time the “I don’t know” didn’t sound like a gap to be filled, she remained silent.
A voice called Legu from the drinks counter. The old man didn’t move.
“Music that finds its place right away,” he said, “is usually more comfortable to remember.”
Zena rested a hand on the back of the chair next to him. “And the music that doesn’t?”
Legu looked up at her. His eyes were clear, more alive than the rest of his face suggested.
“That one comes back whenever it wants.”
No one replied. For a few seconds, the venue seemed to pass by them without touching them: people leaving, others laughing, the drummer packing up his set, the bassist finally putting away his instrument, a stage light switching off with a small click. Then Zena’s wrist device flashed again. She looked at it, and the brief suspension ended.
“The Nerek is still cooling down,” she said.
“How long?”
“Long enough.”
Anesh didn’t know if that was a precise answer or a way of not giving one.
Zena turned toward the side exit of the venue, then toward a secondary corridor almost hidden behind the drinks counter. It wasn’t the same door they had entered through. There were no signs above it, just a small luminous line and a worn technical symbol.
Legu followed her gaze.
“Going upstairs?”
“Maybe.”
“With him?”
“He’s associated with me.”
“Of course.”
The way Legu said that word made Anesh realize he didn’t fully believe the explanation, but he wasn’t rejecting it either.
Zena lifted the guitar case onto her shoulder and gestured to Anesh.
“Come.”
“Where?”
“To a place where you can look at something without blocking traffic.”
Legu laughed quietly into his glass. “Treat him well. It’s rare to see someone so new in a city that always thinks it’s already been seen.”
Zena didn’t reply, but before leaving she picked up a small metal token from the table, spun it between her fingers, and let it fall next to the old man’s glass.
“Don’t drink any more green things.”
“At my age, you don’t take orders from those who arrive late to concerts.”
“At your age, you should recognize good advice.”
Legu leaned slightly toward Anesh, as if confiding something, but loud enough for Zena to hear as well.
“See? In Yantra, even affection tries to look like a procedure.”
Zena pointedly ignored him and headed toward the secondary corridor.
Anesh followed her. Before crossing the threshold, he looked back one last time at the venue. The stage was almost dark, the drummer was closing a container, the bassist was talking with two guys near the wall, Legu had picked up his glass and was staring ahead without drinking. Everything seemed to be returning to its place, and yet the silence Anesh had felt during the last piece hadn’t left. It wasn’t stronger, it wasn’t clearer. It had just remained.
In the corridor behind the venue, the air was cooler. The walls weren’t paneled like in public spaces, and in some places the rock of Mount Uruk showed through the metal structures, damp with condensation. Zena walked slower than before. Maybe it was the case on her shoulders, maybe the just-finished concert, maybe the fact that in that passage there were no public panels, apprentices, supervisors, or traffic lines to cross.
“Legu knows you well,” Anesh said.
“Legu knows everyone who repeats themselves long enough.”
“And do you repeat yourself?”
“Every time I say I’ll stay in the form.”
The phrase came out without irony. After saying it, Zena quickened her pace slightly, as if the corridor had heard her more than necessary.
They climbed a narrow staircase, then another. The noise from the venue faded behind them until it became an indistinct vibration. Above, somewhere, colder air was passing. Anesh felt it on his face before he even saw the door.
Zena entered a code into a side panel. The door hesitated, recognized the access, and opened onto the blue darkness of evening.
“It’s not a place open to the public,” she said.
Anesh looked at her.
“Should I be worried?”
“Only if you start asking questions to the corridors.”
Then she went out.
Anesh followed her, and for the first time since entering Yantra, he saw the city not from within, but from above.