He breathed out deeply and looked closely at the paint peeling from the walls, revealing two, three, four different coats from two, three, four periods of the past. He wondered how many people had been in this room, like him, alone, waiting. He wondered how many of them felt nervous, how many were excited, how many feared their own lives, their own futures; how many just wanted it all to end.
A large old poster of the building, its main hall filled to the brim with gentlemen in dinner suits and ladies in their finest, obscured some writing on the stained wall. Brumby leant forward, ignoring the loud creak of his bones in the quiet air. The blurred cursive letters seemed to perch just outside his vision. Another creak echoed around the room as Brumby patted his pockets, searching for his glasses. It wouldn't really help – he had lost the ability to see, truly see, years ago, back in his youth. Before him. Before it all changed. It was hard to look into the future, and often much harder to the past, but Brumby wanted more than anything to look at what was happening right now, to see his own life for what it was, not what others said it was, not what he himself felt it was, but what it truly was; objective, cold, real. How does one get at the truth? How do you avoid the lessons from your experiences and the voices outside your head telling you what it's all meant?
The past seemed to be dominating his mind lately. It hadn't always been like that but he couldn't remember a time when it wasn't. It must have been a gradual process, like when you're with someone for many years, with them every day, and then look back at old photographs of them when they were younger, when you were both younger, and it's only then that you realise how different they look, how much they've changed, how much you've both changed. Maybe it makes you pine for the past and how things were. Or perhaps you feel thankful for the life you've had. These aren't the thoughts of a young man. But he was born old. Bitter and cynical, he could now add wretched to the list.
A loud knock on the door made him jump. The noise invaded his silence, a silence both cherished and feared in equal measure. He clutched at his case subconsciously, feeling its dimpled texture like a blind man reading Braille. But he knew the words already, knew the whole story.
'Ten minutes, mister Brumby,' shouted a young voice.
The door opened slowly, slightly, which reminded Brumby of his own hesitant peeks into his old bedroom. That guilty feeling came back in waves and his body drooped with pity.
The head poked in for a tiny moment and was gone, leaving only the fading sound of footsteps. Just checking that I am still alive and of this earth, thought Brumby, or that I am awake. A smile creased his face.
He pulled a tightly wrapped sandwich out of a small bag and placed it gently onto his rickety legs - not the flat surface they used to be. Slowly, very slowly, and carefully, very carefully, he unwrapped the sandwich, methodically opening one side, turning it over, finding the seem, and opening the other side. He looked down at the white bread and remembered his own dirty and blackened fingers, tiny at the time, wrapped around the exact same ham and cheese sandwich, devouring it hungrily and forgetting to thank the kind Mrs Whyte from the house over. It's strange to think how naive you were when you were younger, as if you had no understanding of the world around you. Maybe that was a good thing. It has to be easier going through those experiences, perpetrated in your home, your sanctuary, if you don't know how bad it truly is.
Brumby looked down at the sandwich, now unsure whether to take a bite. Something was stopping him, something inside, preventing him from fully satiating himself.
He blinked.
When he opened his eyes a young man, the flash from earlier, was staring him straight in the face, with an expression of worry.
Brumby blinked a few more times.
The young man's shoulders relaxed. 'Five minutes, Mr Brumby,' he whispered, as if not wanting to wake the old man.
'Brumby,' said Brumby.
'Yes,' drawled the young man. 'That's right, you're mister Brumby.' His eyes darted either side.
'No,' said Brumby, 'Just Brumby. Not mister. Not doctor. Certainly not The Great. Just Brumby.'
'Oh,' said the young man. 'I'm awful sorry.'
Brumby looked into the young man's eyes, which blinked and shied away.
'What is your name?' asked Brumby.
'What?'
'Pardon?'
'I said wha- Oh. Pardon?'
'What is your name?'
'Julius, sir.'
'Ah.' Brumby sat up rigidly, his arm held out, as he looked distantly beyond the near wall. 'Men at some time are masters of their fates: the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.'
Julius looked at him blankly.
Brumby gave a little chuckle. 'Perhaps my Shakespeare could use a little work,' he said.
Of that he garnered little response.
He thinks me a madman, thought Brumby. 'Julius Caesar,' he said, more as a question.
'Oh, I hate my name,' said Julius. 'Always picked on when I was a kid.'
You still are a kid, thought Brumby. 'A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,' he instead responded.
'Romeo and Juliet! I know that one.'
'You are positively full of culture!' lied Brumby.
'Well now,' said Julius, stepping away, 'If you're gonna be like that I'll-'
'No, no,' protested Brumby. 'Please. Forgive the ramblings of an old man. Here.' He patted the bench next to him.
Julius sat slowly, eventually speaking: 'You aren't old. Well, not that old.'
Brumby chuckled. 'With a line like that, P. T. Barnum himself would be proud.'
Julius nodded absently.
'It is said,' continued Brumby, 'he never uttered that celebrated line. It was much against his nature; being, as he were, more focussed on the customer and business, lest he make fools of the general public. The false utterances of man, as they pertain to credits and such like, oft take a life of their own, seeming to exist outside that of their origins, and like the multi-headed Hydra of fame, have no connection to reality whatsoever.' He shook his head.
'But aren't you famous?' asked Julius.
'I sincerely hope not,' said Brumby, seriously.
'Yeah, sure you are. Even I heard of you and I don't care much for that kind of thing.'
Brumby chuckled, which brought on a cough and a few wheezes. 'That kind of thing,' he repeated, smiling.
'Hurts my ears,' explained Julius.
'Are you interested in other music, Julius?'
'Uh, sure,' he said. 'Well, maybe not the music so much, but this joint, the history. It's seen so highly, even more than the people who've played here. It feels like it's always been here, like the town was built around it. There aren't too many ways you can touch tradition like that. You've got old photos and old people, but this thing has had more photos taken of it and more people in it than I could ever see or meet in my lifetime.'
'Why does that appeal to you, Julius?'
'How can't it? I'm never gonna do anything like you do, I'm not gonna make music or entertain people. But you can bet I wanna make my mark and not just be a nobody.'
'A nobody,' Brumby whispered. He would also be a nobody if he didn't get in with the wrong crowd at the wrong time; part of the revolution. Maybe, thought Brumby, if I were but a nobody, my own life would be possessed of more truth. Rather, my soul is caught by my past, unable to escape the pretence.
'So you wish to make your mark in this place?' said Brumby.
'Who me? Nah.'
The young man had a dreamy look about him.
'What then instead?' prompted Brumby.
Julius stared for a moment. 'Baking. I want to be a baker.' He looked over at the old man.
'A baker?'
'I know, I know. Before you say anything, I don't care what other people think about it. I know it isn't changing the world in the way you do, but it's something I love. I want to settle down and own a bakery of my own, be a part of some community, you know? The kind of place everyone can come to and feel welcome and relaxed, the kind of place that's always been there and always will. I want to be your age some day, no offence, still with my little business, knowing all my customers by name, being a part of their lives, and them a part of mine. That's...it's how I want to make my mark.'
'It is a lovely dream and worthy goal,' said Brumby.
'I don't really go for any fancy stuff. I just want to focus on baking and making sure Cordelia's happy.'
'Cordelia?'
'My wife. Well, hopefully. I haven't actually asked her yet.'
'How delightful,' said Brumby, clapping his hands excitedly. 'You have the beginnings of a thesbian family. Please tell me you will name your first child Othello!'
'Look, you really should get ready to go out there. You're on in a few minutes.'
'Oh, I am terribly sorry, young Julius. I have clearly offended you with a severe lack of tact. You'll have to forgive my humour; it is not as refined as should be for a man my age.'
'It's OK,' said Julius, looking determined. 'You can make fun of me all you want, I just don't like anyone talking bad about Cordelia.'
'You seem to love her very much.'
'Yes,' said Julius.
Just one word, but it hit Brumby with a massive force. So used to his own indecisiveness, to vagueness and doubt, the sound of a single word said with such confidence, such assuredness, was like a revelation. It filled him with energy and enthusiasm, perhaps even a morsel of optimism. At length he looked down at his sandwich, then up to his companion.
'Can you provide for me a favour, Julius?'
'Yes. Maybe. What is it?'
'A little doubt is a good thing,' said Brumby with another small chuckle. 'Fear begone, this will not burden you overly.' At this Brumby looked deeply and gravely at Julius. 'Promise that you will, in all earnestness, perform every act of goodness and rightness upon your dear Cordelia that is imaginable to any but the good Lord.'
Julius started 'Of course-' but was cut off with a persistent Brumby, now leaning in close.
'Promise that you will not be of burden to her with your own doubts and stubbornness, your own jealousies and wanderings. Promise you will spend copious time with her, any such time you possess, even if it is bad for business, for your bakery, and let her not think for even a moment that your love for her is any less than absolute.'
'I promise,' said Julius, seriously.
'Promise that you will never perform an act...' He licked his lips, almost tasting the bitterness, and continued: '...denigrating to her person, such as to asperse her name, and your very own, before your neighbours, lest even that of our Lord.'
'I promise.'
Brumby leaned back. 'I believe you,' he said. 'I like you, Julius. You possess not a silver tongue and thus say only that which may be right and true. You have been given good graces on his earth and shall not beseech the vast opportunities therein by being that which you are not.'
'I'd like to think so,' said Julius, filling with a little pride.
They listened to the muffled sounds of an audience growing restless.
'If I may be so bold, Julius, and please take this in the manner with which it is given; you do not belong here.'
'Wha- er, pardon?'
'Here, in this place, on this night. It is nothing but lies and deceit.'
'I'm not quite sure I follow.'
Brumby felt that pang of excitement. He knew it was time to go on stage, to play in front of his marauding fans – fans, how pretentious was that? - but he felt an unbreakable urge to say what he had to say, to finally remove the burden hanging over him.
'I knew a man at one time,' he began. 'My personage, as it were, was of or about your own age. The world was on the precipice of its own demise and our undoubted intent was to ride in and save the day, if you excuse the saying, as of knights-errant in their chivalrous tasks of righting wrongs and saving damsels. Pessimism and entropy were our enemy; music our weapon. Filled with hubris, a lack of success in our endeavours seemed the crazier thought; at least, in so much as when the words were spoken by him, where all ideas were novel and, dare I say it, ground breaking. Music was in an embryonic stage, having not the time or inclination to evolve, in the Christian way you understand; the music was seen as something trifle, the zeitgeist lacking as then a deeper understanding of the effects in not only the pulling of our heart-strings, but as of a deeper sense in our souls.'
Brumby cleared his throat. It was harder to talk of this than he imagined.
'We detested the band moniker, being as we were more of a gang; not in the way you might think it, as is common with the youth of today, and whose consequences give cause to more strictness and punishment than can be dolled out; but I will refrain from continuing down this path given that you are not at all in the that mould and would most likely become tired of lecture. No, we were family and at our head sat the greatest of them all, an unsurpassed exponent of the classics, a merciless artillery, wielding the violin as it were an extension of his limb: his name was Vincent.'
'I don't think I've heard of him,' said Julius.
'No. That much be true. Even if you had sat friendless adjacent a bright window and studied the history of the music arts throughout your best years, with your lectern draped in the dust of disuse, would you not hear a whisper of that name. Yet, yet my dear Julius, he has brought with him more to influence the lives and culture of music-men than any before and, darest I say it, to come, through their profession, and therefore to every person on the earth.'
Brumby breathed in and out deeply, his eyes damp and mouth curled.
'Oh, he used to play. Did he play! The purest most fantastic music you could ever be privileged to hear! We would sit in my study, like children in class, our legs crossed, despite being all men of age, and our hearts open, our ears fixed in awe at our master. It was at that moment that I blasphemed and withdrew from the lord; for I knew – I knew this! - God did not exist; there could be no form of measurement in which the greatness we bore witness to could be bettered, whether be that on the earth or in heaven.'
Brumby's eyes tightened. They filled with wetness and he cried. His face scrunched, his mouth open, he relived the experience; happy, joyous and warm. The colours – oh, the colours, dancing in front of his eyes, from orange to yellow to red to orange. For a moment he felt the connection, felt embraced by the music, the memory of the music, and didn't feel alone.
When he opened his eyes, the warmth, the energy, remained. It embraced him like a father does a child on a cold winter's day.
'Then one day,' said Brumby, 'he left us. He was gone. As they say, it is the shortest lives that burn the brightest. What he left behind, he-' Brumby breathed out through his nose deeply. 'Nothing can explain the events of that day, not truly; I would thrash the man who ever dared.'
Julius stared at Brumby intently, not breathing, not making a sound, for fear of missing a word. He had felt the energy himself, radiating off Brumby. The room could absorb it in its stride, but his own soul would have to take time to understand the feelings.
'After that,' continued Brumby, 'I gave up on music, unable to bear even the slightest noise. I trapped myself within the confines of my room and slept, slept and ate. At times my unnatural nocturnal reverberations would awaken my person and grate on me such that I resolved to absolve myself of the comforts of dormancy. Further, to hear my teeth grind on the fleshes was but the devil's aulos to my ears; such that I desisted. But one and six days whence, my lucidity in peril, I was forced to wince at many flashes of sounds, some near, some far, that would but fade in before fading out, and repeating themselves incessantly. The ceaseless burdens of my wretched soul were relentless, until:
'Silence. I awoke. Alone, or so I thought, in the quiet, white room of the general hospital. I was later to discover my error in the form of my room mate; an older man from Geelong by the name of Georgios. He quickly, and without due prompting, regaled the story of how he, in all earnestness, woke one day feeling all manner of distress. From what I gathered through his uncouth rhetoric, he had become obsessed with a happy life and full future; but had neither. So, waiting until his wife left on an errand, he hoisted himself up to the railing and, with much effort from all I can tell, tying a noose there upon, the poor fellow looked down at the emptiness of his life. Unfortunately for him, being a man of numbers and no expert seaman, the rope slipped and the poor fellow fell to the floor with such force that his body became unable to move.
'When his wife returned and found him there, strewn on the floor, she laughed, laughed like a drunkard. Where before there was indifference, he now detested the woman and hated all those around him, as if the failed attempt had left him with nothing more than vile scorn.
'It was at that point I came to a realisation. My thoughts before this discourse were of my woe, and only that. However, being but a knife's edge from the reprieve of death can take you in one of two directions: bitterness enshrines you further, as the joyousness of others becomes your jealousies, and annoyed you get at their pity; or you perform those acts required to survive, no matter their particulars, and quickly determine how best to share your accompaniment with those close to you.
'I chose the latter, but not with person – for I had none I wished to express my love, not wife nor parents, for clear reasons. What I did possess was music. That is in what I wished to share my new found optimism, that being the way I could return wholly to humanity. And so I began my recompense.
'My early efforts were laughable. Alone in my minuscule apartment I could not help but be embarrassed that the same room which heard the great Vincent play would have to endure the horrid noises emanating from my instrument. More I played and worse it sounded such that my soul beseeched me to stop. At length, my mind flittered and eventually landed on his perfections; the feelings they aroused were but one part from a degree too powerful to overcome. After much concentration I did what any sane man would do, and tried to recreate them.
'I would hasten back and forth, pondering, playing, attempting to determine the primary elements which made his sound so unique, so earnest to the soul, so fantastical. Much later, for I did not keep track of days and could not in all honesty give a proper account, I had completed my first piece. Any man appropriate and willing to submit I would play it for, and every one to a tee loved it and would applaud it, giving full approbation. At such a pace I was standing before large audiences, playing on important stages. The adulation granted on those evenings would but drive me further. Each piece I wrote, each vain attempt at recreating perfection, seemed to bring with it only more success and more accolades.
'The momentum has thus continued the rest of my life and has brought me here, to this hall, and to my last ever performance, my last ever lie. I'm a fraud, Julius, an absolute fraud. And you know the worst part? I'm not even a fitting fraudster, for the best, most famous of “my” pieces contain only a small part, a threadbare resemblance to the greatness I beheld all those years ago.'
Brumby felt a sudden urge of tiredness overcome him.
Julius sat back. 'But maybe,' he said, 'you are better than you think you are. I can sure see the effect this Vincent has had on your life, so please don't take offence, but maybe your mind has made it all seem better than it was. Like when I used to think back to my childhood at the big playground where me and my brother used to play, and we decided to go back a few months ago but it seemed all small and tiny, not at all like it was. You know?'
Brumby chuckled. 'Thank you for your kind words, Julius,' he said. 'Alas, if there is but one truth in the heavens and the earth, they can be found in the unmatched purity and divination of The Great Vincent. I have chased him my entire life and have not once come close. Never. And now that chase is over, dear Julius, and I have but come a distant second place; as have my family who bore the biggest brunt of my viscerous alienation. It has been too much. I lost a good wife, two children, and a sister. None will engage me, none will open their hearts with their ears and listen to my joy. Why wont they listen? Just a brief selection, a slight hint; the chance to hear an echo, a laboured rendition of perfection. That is all I crave. But they will simply not come. Why won't they come?'
Brumby slouched, sliding down the bench. Julius caught the limp body and held it tight, saying nothing, unable to speak.
There Brumby lay, semi-conscious, in the tiny green room of The Great Hall. His eyes slowly closed and he listened deeply to the fast approaching silence.
© 2011 Ben Safta
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Australia License
