Robert Charles Wilson - The Blue Gularis

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Wilson, Robert Charles - The Blue Gularis [F&SF 1985-07].htm

Robert Wilson was born in 1953 in California, now lives in Toronto, from which he sends this perfectly

chilling story about little Sarah, who undertakes piano lessons and instead receives instruction in

something quite strange...

The Blue Gularis

ROBERT CHARLES WILSON

here was nothing for it, little Sarah must have Lessons; and so the small, dark shrunken man was introduced into

the household like a Lobe-Fin amongst a school of Gourami.

It wasn't Sarah's idea. Sarah, in fact, was dead set against it. The Lessons — piano lessons — were her mother's

notion. Mrs Chesley had married into her husband's shiftless family, subsisted as they did on the remains of the

family fortune, but she was determined that her daughter would not be raised an idler. And so Sarah, who would

have been perfectly happy attending school during the day and tending her tropical fish in the evenings, was

persuaded into an uncomfortable dress (yellow, a color she hated) and presented to Mr. Bodega on a Saturday

morning.

"Sarah Chesley," he said. "How do you do."

Sarah looked at him with dismay. She had imagined a piano teacher to be a formidable and horrible thing, but

Mr. Bodega was even more formidable and horrible. He was so small and old as to seem deflated, a pinkish

brown skin from which the contents had been partially drained. His eyes were an unsettingly bright, focused

blue; and his teeth, which he displayed prominently, were uneven and matched her dress.

Sarah's mother, a buxom woman capable of lifting the dining room table unaided, pushed Sarah forward. "Shake

hands, dear."

She extended her small white hand tenuously. Mr. Bodega put down his valise — an enormous mud-brown case

peeling at the corners, which seemed from the way he carried it to contain something heavy but fragile — and

reached out (too eagerly, Sar-

The Blue Gularis

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Wilson, Robert Charles - The Blue Gularis [F&SF 1985-07].htm

ah thought) with his own long and parchment-like fingers. "So this is our little Liszt manque. Well, well."

Sarah noticed her mother's approving smile.

"If we can begin," Mr. Bodega said, "as soon as possible. . . ."

"Of course. The piano is in the parlor. Sarah will show you. I have shopping to do, but Charles and Em-meline

are upstairs, if you need anything."

"Thank you so much." He bowed then — actually bowed, Sarah thought.

She guided him through the hallway and into the parlor, a room that smelled musty for not having been occupied.

Sarah's mother had insisted that the house must have a Receiving Room for Guests (even though the Chesleys

had never in Sarah's experience had Guests), and so the parlor was closed up and declared off-limits save for

periodic dusting. In it were installed expensive but useless pieces of furniture, such as the glass-doored bookcase

containing an entire set of Will Durant, or the matching lamps with claw feet and women's faces, or the piano.

The room possessed only one small, high window, and the ivy had climbed over that.

"Scales," Mr. Bodega said, seating her at the piano. "Scales, Sarah, are the foundation of music;" he showed her,

his bony fingers surprisingly agile, how to poke the yellowed keys while intoning the names of the notes. This

Sarah did obediently over and over,

while the room filled up with morning heat and dust rose like mist from deep within the body of the piano. She

thought she might choke. She rather hoped she would, in fact; it would gain her a moment's peace, or possibly a

glass of water. But whenever she flagged, Mr. Bodega would sternly direct her attention back to the Scales, until

her head began to swim and her fingers felt clumsy and numb. An enormous amount of time passed in this

fashion — almost half an hour.

Finally Mr. Bodega said, "Stop!"

Sarah did.

He looked at her — not unkindly, Sarah thought, but with a certain evaluating frankness that made her

uncomfortable. She began to wonder if he was practicing X-Ray Vision or some similar arcane power.

He said then, his voice dry but insinuating, as if it had been lubricated with talcum power, "You don't really want

to learn the piano, do you?"

"No," she confessed. There seemed no point in hiding it.

"No. That is perhaps as it should be. Little girls very seldom wish to learn the piano; those who do are usually

disagreeable. It was your mother's idea?"

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Robert Charles Wilson - The Blue Gularis

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