After the Concert
Everything started moving again. Chairs scraped the floor, someone got up to reach the drinks counter, others approached the stage. Two apprentices called the drummer’s name and he replied by raising his drumsticks with 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 and his gaze lowered to the strings, occasionally touching one without really making a sound.
Zena had knelt in front of the guitar case. She didn’t speak. She carefully wound the cable, secured it with a dark tie, checked the bridge of the instrument, 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 little earlier, on stage, Zena had seemed very 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 was once again the girl from the workshop: impatient, precise, opposed to any minor obstacle that stood between her and time.
The drummer came up to her, wiping his forehead with his forearm.
“Next time, tell me beforehand.”
“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 at him, but didn’t reply immediately. The drummer didn’t really seem angry. There was irritation, sure, but also a kind of begrudging respect, as if he was forced to acknowledge the quality of a problem while still considering it a problem.
“You kept time,” Zena said.
“I always keep time.”
“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 the 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 stays 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 accepted or ignored without offense.
“You stretched the measure,” he said.
Zena stopped next to 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 sidelong glance. “At my age you were probably already unbearable.”
“I was unbearable in a more useful way.”
“I doubt it.”
The old man laughed softly, without showing his teeth. Anesh listened to them the way you listen to a language whose words you understand, but not yet all the nuances. Between Zena and Legu there was no family familiarity, nor the simple acquaintance of regulars. There was something more worn: perhaps a series of phrases repeated over the years, or evenings when he had sat 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?”
Legu indicated the stage with a small movement of his glass. “Where did you put this music?”
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 took longer.
“At first I knew where to put it,” he finally said. “Then not anymore.”
Zena stopped adjusting the strap on the case.
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.
“It’s a vague answer,” Zena observed.
“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 knew how to play it. Or maybe he was no longer used to it. For an instant he saw his father’s hands working 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 that “I don’t know” didn’t sound like an emptiness to be filled, she remained silent.
A voice from the drinks counter called Legu. The old man didn’t move.
“Music that immediately finds a place,” he said, “is easier to leave where you found it.”
Zena placed 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 comes back whenever it wants.”
For a few seconds the place 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 much longer?” asked Anesh.
“Enough.”
He didn’t know if that was a precise answer or a way of not giving one at all.
Zena turned toward the side exit of the place, 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 made Anesh realize he didn’t entirely believe the explanation, but had no intention of challenging it.
Zena hoisted the guitar case onto her shoulder and gestured to the boy.
“Come.”
“Where?”
“To a place where you can look at something without blocking traffic.”
Legu laughed softly 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 took 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 useful advice.”
Legu looked at the token, then at Zena. “See?” he said to Anesh in a low voice, but loud enough for her to hear. “In Yantra, even affection, before showing itself, tries to take a useful form.”
Zena ignored him with the care reserved for remarks heard too many times and headed toward the secondary corridor.
Anesh followed her, but before crossing the threshold he turned one last time toward the place. 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 simply remained.
In the corridor behind the place, the air was cooler. The walls weren’t paneled like in the public spaces, and some sections of Mount Uruk’s rock emerged between 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 form.”
The phrase came out without irony. After saying it, Zena quickened her pace just a bit, as if the corridor had heard her more than necessary.
They climbed a narrow staircase, then another. The noise of the place faded behind them until it became a vague vibration. Above, somewhere, colder air was passing. Anesh felt it on his face before he even saw the door.
Zena entered the code into a side panel. The door hesitated, recognized the access, and opened onto the blue darkness of the evening.
“It’s not a place open to the public,” she said.
Anesh looked at her. “Should I be worried?”
“Only if you decide to find out how deep the mountain is without using the stairs.”
Then she went out.
Anesh followed her and, for the first time since arriving in Yantra, saw the city not from within, but from above.