The Blue Book

The fifteenth chapter. The queen.

Have you ever been to a concert? Like a proper one. It doesn't matter what kind of music, just a concert. Well, imagine it like a quick trip with a return ticket to the sky. It may begin gently, it may not, but usually they start soft, and then they go from there. So they don't scare anyone away before it's started, you know. It's a nice trip, you're levitating at best, you can still feel the gravity and electricity coming from earth. It's tingling. Let's say they begin with a few violins. They start of just about touching the strings with the bow. There's tension and focus, but no blood, not yet. It's a work in progress, they're focused on their sheets, they barely notice you're there. You're about a fifty feet of the ground now, a bit of a pull in your stomach. Then comes the wind section, but I like to just call them the pointy shiny stick wing, it's a whole science there I've never really understood. We'll get there. A hundred and nine, ten, eleven, twelve feet, there's an eastern wind coming. You look down on the place you came from and feel badly for never realising its size from where you stood ground-bound. Meanwhile a sneaky little drumbeat has joined in, they're all listening to it, they'd all be lost without it. After seven hundred feet comes the brass. Now this is the other kind of shiny things in the pointy stick wing, we'll call them the yellow horns. A piano and a harp is there as well, you don't notice them, not til about three thousand thirty six feet. The pull in your belly increases, at first you think its gravity pulling you home and down but actually it's the conductor, pulling you higher up. The melody is actually not the most important thing here, instead you see them sinking into their seats, no more stiff upright position, after a while they sit almost as they do practising at home. All they can see are the sheets and the thin stick and hand showing them pace and instructions. So skilled. So many hours. Ten thousand feet and rising still. It's loud, really loud and not decreasing, there's this feeling in you too big to name, like it's all right with the world and everything could stay perfect if this moment could last forever. But there's nothing to capture it, not really. Pictures and recordings doesn't count. It's the shadow of a moment, a bunch of scrambling noises that could never match up to that time.
It fills you up, the lights and the people in front of you that matters, that are actually right there in front of you. In absolute psychical form, solid and present and playing. Twenty thousand feet up comes the solo. It makes no difference which instrument. Me, I prefer the oboe. Underneath you is infinite air swooshing about, around you is a small cloud like a fog. You find it impossible to imagine the ground you used to sit on, the soil you held in your hands. The soloist is magnificent. Impossibly fast. You feel a tinge of sadness and envy that you might never play like that, but more than anything you're glad you get to hear it. You kid yourself into believing you can see where the atmosphere ends and deep, cold, hard space begins. Thirty thousand feet and the soloist is at its height, the absolute climax where the rest of the orchestra picks up where they left. It's deafening, but fucking worth it. It's blood and love and that feeling that put the entire room together. There's no boundaries or differences between one energy to another.
You begin the rushing fall down, the feeling is in your throat and stomach like a bird. Too much air everywhere, so much you can't breath, too fast, much, much too fast. That unreachable earth is everything you see while you search for the smallest little thing to grab onto. Yes, the moment was long gone, but the feeling could last. A little longer.
There's this force pushing against you, it's familiar like gravity and acceleration like its foreign sibling, but it's not quite. Still new. It's nice. The slow dimming of the orchestra is that force, like an undiscovered law of physics, like pressure being put on and released at the same time. The instruments fade away and one section after another is put down. The last to go is that lonely violin, you're just about two feet of the ground now. When it goes out, you collide. No more sky for you. But you were there. You really were.
That was the way the orchestra played for me today.
'Charles!' I called out as the deafening activity of the musicians leaving took place. They had all bowed for me, every last one, just for me, as I was the lone viewer of their spectacle.
His face lit up, while he made his way for the stairs at the side of the stage, passing no less than six players who all had something to say to him. He reminded me of a heron. Wearing his half- long greyish tunic and black coat with that old, kind face with the pretty eyes. He was their great bird. He kept them in order without hardly ever asking for it. He had their respect after so many years of proving himself.
'Hello, Blue. Delighted, delighted.' He said in his mellow, thoughtful voice. In the brief, yet intense time I had known him, and gotten the opportunity to talk to him he had said a maximum of a couple hundred words to me, all of which were so well- chosen and not at all random.
'Charlie, you're a magician.' I said to him, and of course I meant it. With it being so incredibly rare meeting someone who actually takes care of their words you learn to appreciate it and to return the favour.
'Thank you, young one, but I'm nothing but an idiot with a stick.'
'A genius idiot, then. The music makers, they're incredible.'
'Quite. It's all down to them. All of it. I just give them the papers with the dots and funny little words in Italian.'
'Well, thank the heavens for the Italians.'
'Yes, let's.' He chuckled. 'What steered your feet to my direction this night?'
'Just the music I suppose, and an interest. Oh, and Kit would be glad to know I was here.' I answered. He looked down, disbelievingly.
'Why is that?' He asked.
'I don't know yet. But you're important. You're so important to so many, to no one more than Kit. I'd like to know what it is about you.'
'He's young and impressionable.' He said almost embarrassed. 'I'm sure there are better role models than me.'
'But there's not, though.' I insisted. 'I want to ... figure you all out I suppose.'
'What, all of us? Everyone on this island?'
'Everyone. Everyone I come across. It's true that we're all idiots but everybody's got a different reason.'
'Perhaps.' He said dodging agreeing with me. 'Perhaps it's not as big mystery as it seems?' His old, pretty eyes fixed on mine and the scent from his tunic and his hight seemed very palpable.
'Why wouldn't it be?'
'People are not so different from each other as they would like to believe, and most of us are not really much to figure out.'
I shifted, stayed still and waited for him to continue. 'Most of us aren't that mysterious and even if they are it's their business.'
'You think I should leave it alone?'
He did a head tilt and wrinkled his chin in halfway agreement.
'Not necessarily. You might need to figure out the few to understand the many.'
'What about you? With all these thoughts you're just as complicated as anyone else.'
He didn't seem to mind this odd turn of topic to this vague debate too much, and I loved the smile in his eyes that reassured me and drove me to press on.
'Now, I never said we're not complicated. You'll never find a race that has made it more difficult for themselves than humans, but we're not mysterious.'
'How would you know?'
'I don't. Again, I never said I was right, this is just some beliefs from one idiot.'
'I've begun to doubt that you really are an idiot. What else?' I asked and straightened out my dress while I walked down the aisle between the theatre- seats. With four quick steps up the stairs I stood on the huge, empty stage. It was overwhelming. How could anyone just stand here and not be breathless?
'I believe life would have little to no value without my daughters. I believe my wife has saved my life. I believe I would have been content in another profession, and perhaps not so tired, but never so happy as I've been as a conductor.' He began.
'And?'
'And ... I'm a man of many, many beliefs, the rest of which I will not bore you with tonight.'
'Bore me, please.' I requested.
He laughed at put his hardened fingers on his belly.
'I believe it's healthy to not take yourself too seriously. I'm not being humble, it's not in me, I really am just an idiot with a stick. Music is in me, always has been, but to care for it, to nurture it is toil and time. Lots and lots of time.'
'In what way has Monica saved you?'
'Why, in every way possible. My wife's the genius. She graduated from the Geneva Medical College 91. She was admitted as a joke after many years and triumphed over them all.' He moved his hand without even noticing, up to his chest and it was barely that I caught but his pupils got bigger and his shoulders sank too. Imagine to be so loved that every muscle in another persons body reacts to your very name. 'I too was once wounded and she got so mad at me for dying that I didn't have the nerve.'
'What happened?'
'Nothing that is worth remembering on a night like this.'
'Alright, fair enough. Tell me a story then.'
'What?' He said, whirling around from where he stood fussing over sheets.
'A story. You're a musician, you tell stories.'
'It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. I could play you something. I'd be glad too.'
'I'll save that offer for a rainy day, if that's okay.'
'Sure, sure.' He nodded distracted, looked at me and did a gesture with his hands as if to say ...
'I'll go.' I said and sat down on the edge of the stage ready to jump. I was afraid that I'd outstayed my welcome or stirred memories forgotten for good reason. What if Kit would be angry, embarrassed or worse disappointed. I'm not easily swayed, but what Kit thinks of me, matters. He gave me shelter and company and has basically welcomed me to the most important people in his life. I came here to make a gesture. I ruined it.
'Once upon a time there was a queen.' Charles began. I could hardly believe it. Is he telling me a story? Why would he do that?
'A big, sleepy queen who only ever wore black and yellow clothes. She had only just woken up from her heavy sleep in a dark and cold place where no sun could reach and where sometimes water poured in. The queen was in search of a new home, as her old one had been abandoned the year before. Her very life depended on her building this home someplace perfect, or else she would surely die.' He paused and looked up, hardly even for a moment from the music sheets where he pretended to read his story. I sat legs crossed and listened intently, smiling and frowning. His entire figure was highlighted by the dark-red chairs behind him, the balconies and the full atmosphere that he was the center of. 'The sleepy queen was tired and wanted nothing more than to go back to that safe, dark place. But she was hungry so she continued. She found a place where she could rest her dark head for a while, and she was also given something sweet to lighten her quest. But in return, the residents of that kind place asked that she took something with her to spread along her journey, so that they might both prosper. The queen found this fair and seemed easy enough, but what she carried weighed her down, but she couldn't refuse those who had helped her. Worrying more and more that she'd never find a place to build her new home, the queen slurped the last of the sweetness she'd been given and closed her eyes only for a moment. She woke hours later and found her body rigid and unwilling. It seemed that she was doomed. She was saddened but thought she'd always known this was a possibility. She had failed to continue her dynasty and the daughters she was supposed to have raised would never be. This, she regretted and grieved. Silly me, the queen thought. She always had loved the sun and so she looked up one last time and her soft yellow figure was cast in light. Straight ahead she found an abandoned nest where she imagined she'd be warm at least. I won't die in the cold, she thought and willed her heavy body to move. Exhausted and sad she slumped down the inside of the tree. If only she had found a home in time ... she let herself fall asleep but was not released by the tree. It wanted to be habitated after being empty and alone for so long. She was given the warmth of the tree and the small stock it had of the sweet stuff that she craved. She was luckily soon revived and found the strength to have her first daughter. She was strong and promised that her ma would want for nothing now that she had found them a home and set out to bring home the sweet stuff so that she could have hundreds of siblings. The queens' empire grew across the span of a hot summer and the tree was happy to once again have a family to shelter. The queen had many sons after a long while but felt that she eventually grew old and set out for a last trip in the sun. In the autumn her successor, the strongest and fastest of her daughters knew what was to come next year and found a comfy cold place that would keep her safe in winter. The queen died on a big, soft flower, for she was a bumblebee. The end.'