R. A. MacAvoy - Black Dragon 02 - Twisting the Rope

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Twisting the Rope
R. A. MacAvoy
Off to California
The blow rang through the motel room, freezing six of the seven people within it in midmotion. Theodore
Poznan had a brush wet with nail polish in his left hand, while the index finger of his right was stiffly pointing
at the ceiling. His hair, bleached in layers from straw to medium brown, slid forward off his shoulder and hung
by his face. His beard jutted forward. His eyes were vaguely reproachful.
Elen Evans had a face of great delicacy and short hair cut with wisps around the ears and down the neck.
She lofted a two-foot-long iron piano-tuning wrench with a wooden handle, which she had been using on her
triple harp. Her expression was ironical.
Martha Macnamara, exactly thirty years older than Elen, was caught with a paper cup in her hand. She
looked flustered and slightly apelike, with her round eyes and open mouth. She thought the words "oh, dear"
and she wondered if there was going to be a brawl. She was also a bit glad (glad in spite of herself) that
Pádraig had pounded the table in that way: hard, loud, and just at the moment he had wanted to.
Seated in the corner by the Formica table was a slight middle-aged man with black skin and Chinese eyes.
The light of the wicker-shaded lamp put a shine on his black hair. His name was Long, and he held a
three-year-old girl on his lap. This child's blue eyes were open very wide as she stared at Pádraig Ó
Súilleabháin.
Pádraig himself was the sixth person frozen by the violence of his action. He was a young man who looked
still younger, and a shade of purple spread from his ears to his face and down both sides of his neck. His fist,
rough-chapped and very clean, slowly relaxed on the tabletop and then clenched again.
The little girl broke the silence. "Why did Poe-rik hit the table? Did he want to hit—" The remarkably long
fingers of the dark man's hand curled over her mouth. Leaning down, he whispered something into her ear and
then bounced her twice, forcefully.
The seventh person in the room—the one who was not shocked by Pádraig's outburst—was holding him up,
with the neckband of the boy's sweater turned inside out, and was examining the tag with a show of interest.
He raised his eyes now as Pádraig craned about and glared at him.
"No need to lose control, boy," said George St. Ives. "I was just curious why a traditional musician, or at
least what passes for traditional these days, and what passes for a… Well, anyway, haven't we got enough
plastic in the world around us already without wearing the stuff in front of people?"
Pádraig opened his mouth, but there was a brief pause before he replied: a pause of uncertainty. "I thought…
I thought that I would do better to try to look nice in front of people. Instead of looking like I was after digging a
hole somewhere."
George St. Ives had gray eyes surrounded by wrinkles, and his forehead wrinkled as he held the
overstretched fabric up to his face. "'One hundred percent acrylic. Machine wash cold. Cool dryer. No bleach.'
Red plastic with five-pointed stars in some sort of metallic thread. Wouldn't be very suited for digging a hole,
would it? Nor for any other manly activity." His voice was gravelly but expressionless. His heavy face was a
bit yellow.
"I can wash it." Pádraig wrested his sweater out of the older man's grip and started to stand up. "If it were
báinín, how could I, in all these hotels?" His chair fell over. The pulling had left a sag in the back of his
sweater. He looked foolish and knew it.
St. Ives watched Pádraig's distraction dispassionately and he smiled. "Did some girl buy it for you, Sully?"
Pádraig, who had retreated the length of the bed, turned back again. His sweater was now off center on his
shoulders and he shrugged into it, saying: "My mother bought it for me. She said it would go in the bag well,
without wrinkles." Then he rubbed his face with both hands. "Oh, this is stupid! Talking about my jumper! You
are only looking for another way to rag me. To hell with it."
"There's the ticket," said Ted Poznan, who was sitting on one of the beds. He shook the bottle of nail polish
and prepared to coat his second finger. All the fingernails of his right hand were long and thick with old,
yellowed polish. "One's mind is her own mastery."
Elen, seated below him, made a weary gesture with all fingers spread. "Why 'her' own mastery, Ted? Is the
mind a female?"
Teddy gave her one of his very many earnest gazes. "Why shouldn't I say 'her' instead of 'his'? I used to use
'tey' for either, but so few understood, and I try very hard not to use sexist language."
"Oh, you succeed, Teddy. How you succeed!" She ran her hand absently along the pegs of her tall harp as
she spoke to Ted Poznan, but she did not look away from Pádraig. "There is no one more politically correct
than you. Not in all California ."
Long stood up, letting Marty Frisch-Macnamara slide off his lap like a cat. He retrieved a tissue from his
jacket pocket and blew his nose, which was red. His amber-brown eyes, too, were bloodshot and he was
breathing with his mouth open. It was a miserable cold.
"Eight weeks," stated Martha Macnamara, in tones of great conviction. "It's eight weeks today since any one
of us has seen home. Remember that, everyone, and be charitable."
It looked as though the bad moment had frayed and dissipated in the general weariness, but George St. Ives
was not reconciled. He glanced at Martha, whose band this was, and then away. His gnarled, nervous fingers
played patterns against his hip. "I don't think there's anything out of line in objecting to things that destroy
our… direction, here. After all, we have gone through a lot of sacrifice. The bitterness of being ignored by
critics. The full houses that still don't pay…"
"This is not an original tune, George," said Elen. "We've done all variations, in the past eight weeks."
Martha broke in. "So George thinks I made a mistake in not trying for any really big halls. Well, maybe I did.
But it was a decision I had to make a lot of months ago. And may I say it's better to sell out a little hall than
sit like little toads in a big empty pond. And this tour will make all I predicted."
"Even if we don't find the missing cash from last night?" asked Teddy.
Long cleared a phlegmy throat. "That is my responsibility."
Martha pointed a monishing finger at him. "You will not make that up out of your own pocket! It's fortunes of
the road."
"And I am the road manager."
"But I am the high mucky-muck herself, and I say—"
St. Ives raised his voice. "Enough! I was not talking about money. If I wanted money, I'd be in a very different
line of work. I want my music to be heard. This year. Tonight. Life is uncertain and all the old arts are
breathing their last at once. Here we are, a few who know what's being-lost. I had hoped… We might have…"
Almost everyone looked away from St. Ives. Many sighed. Marty wiggled.
If he noticed this lack of enthusiasm, it only made him more determined to speak. "Not that the music we
play is in any sense correct by Celtic traditional standards: how could it be, with Pozzy on a Spanish guitar,
Sully with his nineteenth-century German transverse flute, and then of course the squeeze-box: a
factory-made sealed package of Victorian origin, which one can neither tune nor repair…" St. Ives paused in
sorrowful consideration of the weaknesses of the button accordion. "But hey! We don't have to court the
modern audience with bizarre clothing."
Martha scratched her scalp with both hands until her gray hair hobbled up and down. She looked very
bothered. "George, if we followed your ideas of what was traditional, there would be no one up there but you
on the pipes."
He appeared to consider that. "No. I'm willing to. grant that the harp is traditional to Celtic music."
"Thanks, George, but I doubt I have the strength to endure your approval," drawled Elen. She put the
instrument in question protectively onto her shoulder and continued tuning.
"Then be at ease, Miss Evans. I said the harp, not the harp player. There is nothing more traditional in your
musicianship than in, say, Ravel." He rubbed one heavy-knuckled hand over his eyes and winced at some
private ache.
With an unnaturally innocent expression, Elen Evans looked around her. "La! Ah believe Ah have been
insulted!" She met Pádraig's eye.
Perhaps her glance was merely languid, and it was Pádraig's own hurt he read into it. But Ó Súilleabháin,
who had stood miserably silent in his twisted sweater, now went from red to white and lunged for the piper,
hands balled into fists. He did not touch him, however, for he came up against the afflicted Mr. Long. That
gentleman had somehow wandered between the two in search of fresh Kleenex. Pádraig's arm was softly
circled by a dark hand, which he could not remove. "Bí cúramach, a Phádraig,"; said Long very quietly, and
then he turned away.
The tissue box was on the table beside St. Ives. Long brushed the stocky piper as he reached around him,
and St. Ives staggered.
With the first signs of real temper, St. Ives pushed back, succeeding only in pushing himself backward onto
the mattress, which swayed beneath his weight.
"Take a walk, George. Cool off." Martha spoke quietly, but all in the room turned to her in surprise, even
George. He pursed the mouth that was hidden in his curly, bisonlike beard. He swelled beneath his layers of
sweaters. He rose to his feet, but appeared to reject the soft suggestion that had really been a command.
Long was beside him, shoulders almost touching. He blew his nose again, discreetly. "Lovely afternoon for a
walk in Santa Cruz , St. Ives," he said, with a genteel enthusiasm. "Blue sky, ocean breezes. A good way to
regain a flagging inspiration. To reflect, perhaps, on the death of old arts. If one doesn't fancy a nap, of
course.
"I myself—and he tossed the tissue into the bedside basket—"am going to nap." He looked significantly from
the bed to St. Ives.
Much to the surprise of most in the room, the piper walked out without another word. They heard his feet
echoing down the hall and out the back door of the motel, for St. Ives stayed in a place apart from the rest of
them.
Elen glanced at Long with exaggerated respect. "The big lady's muscleman?"
He blinked sore eyes at her. "Well, it is my bedroom, Elen. He could scarcely stage a sit-down in it."
Her gaze grew even more disbelieving. "Sure he couldn't! George would never be so rude. I think he must
believe you're carrying a gun."
At the reminder that this nicest room in the mediocre motel belonged to Long, all the musicians rose also.
But Mr. Long had walked from the space between the beds back to the breakfast table, where he smiled
graciously and sat down again, showing no more signs of going dormant.
"I don't, Daddo," said Marty, edging away from him. "I don't fancy a nap at all. I more fancy a walk, I think."
No one answered her. Relief was audible through the room as they realized the awkward scene was over.
"Ravel," said Elen Evans contemplatively, as she began to strike octaves on the left row of strings. "I really
prefer Debussy." She plucked a great, rolling, unsettled chord along the length of the harp, top to bottom.
Teddy spoke to the unhappy chord, rather than to
Elen's dispassionate words. "Don't be put off your center by that, Elen. I don't think George feels very well.
Inside himself. I see him as off balance. Harried from within, you know. He needs some sort of adjustment."
Her face looked rather like Stan Laurel's, so blankly she gazed at him. "Spiritual in nature, Teddy? Or
chiropractic?"
"Either or both. Or nutritional. I wonder about his amino acids…"
"I prefer past-life regression, myself."
"You have a marvelous gift of acceptance, Ted," said Martha appreciatively. "I admit he pisses me off
wonderfully, when he gets going like that. And he doesn't even nip at my ego, as he does to yours."
"George doesn't really twist the screws in Teddy." Elen smiled like a madonna, plucked an octave and
winced at the sound. She uttered a quiet and very nasty curse and twisted the big turning wrench once more.
"Not as he does to Pat."
Ted blew on his ugly nail. "He isn't exactly wild over my guitar. I can hear his teeth grinding every time I add a
chord progression. But that's his problem, not mine.
"And he really does care, you know. About the accuracy of what he's doing. There's few enough who do."
Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin glanced worriedly at Ted. "Do you think… Did I do wrong in getting angry at him?
Maybe I didn't understand enough…"
"Getting angry doesn't help, that's for sure, Pádraig," said Ted, putting his hand on the Irishman's shoulder
and shaking him in warm fraternal fashion. "But I really feel with you in your reaction. It's really a gut-wrencher
to keep your balance when someone around has lost his. What's important now, though, is to keep your
channels open with the guy."
Pádraig blinked. "To…?"
Martha, who had been combing her hair in the mirror, stopped long enough to laugh at his expression. "That's
Californian, Pádraig."
"Mellowtalk," added Long helpfully. "I believe he means you are to continue to encourage conversation with
St. Ives—or possibly to dredge the mouth of his harbor."
"Now there I'm willing to help," said Elen, with a wicked giggle.
Ted nodded left and right. "Okay, okay, you have my full permission to make fun of me. Any time. Otherwise
I'll start taking myself seriously."
He cracked his neck with the heel of his hand and gave a satisfied yawn. "It's all part of the cycle, friends and
neighbors. What goes around, comes around." He rose, examined his ugly, guitar player's fingernails,
stretched his lean body left and right, and left the room. "Oh, the wavelengths of rapture! Sweet-home
California !" he called back from the doorway and then he was gone.
"He does that on purpose," muttered Martha. "He can talk perfectly good English when he wants to. I think
it's important to him to have some strong ethnic identity."
Elen Evans giggled. "I asked him why the hell he wanted to play Celtoid traditional, when his heart is so
purely new age, and you know what he said? Jigs and hornpipes ground him. Me, they knock flat on my
keister!"
Martha sighed. "And yet Teddy plays his part very well. He has an ear for the traditional sound and he makes
no ruckus. Doesn't seem to go into turmoil like… some."
She grunted and drummed her fingers on her knee. "What grounds him is grinding me down, I think."
Long spoke with some asperity. "That is not the music, Martha, but the musicians. You should take some
privilege as well as responsibility from your position. Forbid George to bother you."
"Forbid…" Martha uttered a one-syllable laugh that was more than half a choke. "My dear, to stop George
from 'bothering' would be simply to stop him from existing!"
"I agree," added Elen. "St. Ives's basic essence…"
"His interest is to convince you all of that, but really he is as capable as the next fellow of coming to terms
with…"
"Dock his wage," suggested Pádraig, with a shade of malice.
Martha put her back to the wall and tucked her skirt neatly around her legs. "I forbid you all to bother me
further about this," she said.
"Oops," said Elen, and they all relapsed into silence.
The walls of the motel room were white, brightened by the light of sky, sea, and pavement. Occupied as it
was by slumped figures and dull faces, it might have been a dentist's waiting room. Marty Frisch-Macnamara
hopped over and pulled the Levolor blind awry to look out at the beach and the Santa Cruz pier. The others,
deprived of their wrangle, hadn't as much energy. They looked at each other.
"I'm sorry," said Pádraig, speaking to Elen. "To be at hitting people in front of you. I'm not a brute."
Her small dark face went round through astonishment. "A brute? You, Pat? Perish forfend!"
Pádraig shifted uncomfortably, because he wasn't quite sure what she had said. His blue jeans gapped a bit
at the waist, for Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin had lost weight on this tour.
Martha, leaning against the headboard of the other bed, slapped both hands on her knees. "Eight weeks,"
she repeated. "This tour has lasted for eight weeks and taken in nineteen American states plus B.C. I think
no one is responsible for anything he or she has said or done in a long while. Except me, for making you all
go through this."
Mayland Long turned toward her. Such was the peculiarity of his attenuated frame that it seemed not only his
head and neck that twisted about, but his whole torso. Sunlight glowed against his suit of raw silk and made
his pale eyes almost yellow, but the brightness could not touch the skin of his face and hands.
"Are you regretting it, Martha?" The question was wondering, and Long folded his hands together (the fingers
extending past the opposite wrists), waiting for her reply.
Martha frowned, eyes unfocused. A moment later she snorted in most unladylike manner. "Regretting it? I am
not. Not a bit of it. I knew there would be moments—that there would be sparks—with a group of musicians
as able and as different as we are. People don't do good work if they don't care about things—sometimes the
silliest things— and there's no musician like a traditional musician for having untraditional opinions. What
counts is the music we've made."
She rose from the bed. Her wraparound skirt with tiny sailboats on it was not straight. There was a flat spot at
the side of her head where her newly bobbed and waved hair had touched the headboard. But her blue eyes
caught the window light like circles of sky and everyone in the room listened when she spoke, even Marty,
her granddaughter.
"And I got what I wanted there, all right. We've made our little bit of magic. In Chicago we caught fire, and
then, last night, in San Francisco "—she scratched her head, a small smile softening her mouth—"we were
up to… past our own limits."
An answering smile came from Elen Evans. She felt her shoulders sink down and realized just how tense she
had been, until now. She met Long's eyes and wondered if he understood the overwhelming importance of the
thing Martha had just said. To people like herself, and Elen, and even St. Ives, who simply had to play this
music, whether people wanted to hear it or not…
Long was different. He was not a musician. Certainly he had no Celtic background, to spark his interest in the
history of it. One never knew why, with Long, for his face showed nothing. That was an advantage, she
guessed, in a road manager. Maybe it was easier for a Chinese, or Indonesian or… What was he, anyway?
Besides dotty over Martha. Elen Evans put her face against the box of her triple harp to hide her grin.
"For some of us the limits are easy to find!" It was Pádraig again, and the words were bitter. Before Elen
could move from behind her harp to answer him, he was out of the room and gone.
She followed, scooping up her big net bag and drop ping the piano-tuning wrench into it. The bag swung and
struck against the dresser with a sound of cracking wood. She cursed the thing with a calm and placid curse
as the door closed behind her.
"Oh, dear," said Martha, sitting down hard in the other wicker chair. Long met her eye. "We haven't heard the
last of this," she said. "From St. Ives, I mean."
"I'm not having any fun yet," Marty announced, coming back to Mayland Long's lap. "I just thought I'd tell you,
Daddo. In case."
Martha gave a rather brittle laugh and threw the Kleenex box across the room.
The ocean was divided; as far as a hundred yards out from the Santa Cruz pier it was a warm jade color,
while from an abrupt line at that distance it ran a cold, uncompromising blue. The tide came in in great soft
rolls, with no white showing. Mayland Long and Martha Macnamara sat together on a bench at the end of the
pier. Small breezes blew around them, some scented with flowers and some with fish. Marty stood leaning
over a fenced opening through the floor of the pier, whence came the barking of seals. She wore yellow
trousers, a white T-shirt, and plastic sunglasses edged in white and yellow daisies. Long's index finger was
locked in her belt loop to keep her from falling in. That black hand was glittering with scales, for he had been
helping the little girl feed the seals. No one, not even Marty, had spoken for five minutes.
Martha let her attention drift with the tide from the blank western horizon to the bright Ferris wheel on the
boardwalk, and on to the point lighthouse. She was thinking about Mendocino, where she had lived for the
last four years, and wondering why one could get most achingly homesick in a place very like one's home.
And why did a person go out on the road again, when she didn't need the money, and was old enough to
know where she wanted to be? She turned to Long expectantly, as though she had asked the question
aloud.
But he was not following her thoughts at all. Instead the dark head was drooped forward, eyes closed. His
nose was obviously very sore and his skin tight over the bones of his face: so little flesh.
Martha caught her lower lip in her teeth, for she suddenly noticed the gray hair at his temples. Had she
known he was going gray? Dear God, to have him beside her every day and not to notice. No, surely she had
noticed, on some level. It was just that she was so tired today. Things didn't look right.
And what if Mayland was looking older? So was she. She hadn't made him follow her from city to city and
country to country like this. It was his idea. And she hadn't made him… what he was. Whatever ofttimes sad
thing he was.
His eyes opened, focused directly at her. The virus had exaggerated the epicanthic folds at the outer corners
of them, making him look more Chinese. "I have no idea why people do the things they do. None
whatsoever."
She was taken aback. Had she been speaking aloud, after all? "Do you mean yourself—why you're here—or
why I wanted to leave Mendocino at all?"
The eyes narrowed to slits and he laughed. "Neither one. I was talking about the altercation in the motel
room. One would think I would understand human nature by now, considering how long I've been studying it."
Martha frowned in thought. She could look quite fierce that way, despite her round blue eyes and pink-petal
complexion. "You can't see why Pádraig got angry…?"
"Any creature will react to assault by fighting back, if it can't run away. No, I more wonder why St. Ives
attacks, and why he chooses Pádraig as his victim so often. The boy is no threat."
The wind caught Martha's skirt as she stood up. She put one hand against her knee to hold it as she walked
over to stand beside Marty. Down below, in the shadow, the smooth lumps of seal with their small-dog faces
lay resting on the pier's cross braces, and floated staring up from the black, swirling water. "No more fishies,"
she called down to them, and when Marty let out a seallike sound of protest, she added, "No more money to
buy fishies.
"Pádraig is not a competitor to George. He's his natural prey. You can see how George plays on the poor
creature's emotions: all the scale from fury to discouragement to self-loathing. Pádraig is only twenty, while
George is almost my age.";
"Positively a museum piece."
"Well—old in his craft, anyway. But Pádraig's being hit with everything new at once: the geography, the
people, this crazy lifestyle." She shrugged. "And I promised his mother I'd take care of him."
Long blew his nose. "Don't be silly, Martha. You cannot be a life-support system for the boy. At least he has
his health. That is a great good fortune and a reasonable cause for envy." He came to stand beside her, and
he looked down at the seals. One of them raised its head, barked, and then they were gone in a gleam of
disturbed water. Marty let out a yelp of protest.
Martha nudged Long's side companionably. "Pádraig's father runs a fishing boat out of Dunquin, my dear, and
Pádraig himself is one of the best sailors on Iv Ráth. Dinghy races. He's taken me out in a naomhóg under
sail too. (I thought I would die.) But he's no good working with his father."
"They don't agree?" Long put one hand around Martha's shoulder and the other hand on Marty's flaxen head.
The little girl shook it off.
"Seosebh doesn't explain things well. And he has a temper. He calls the boy an asal and—poof!—he is an
ass. Long ears and all. Makes stupid mistakes with the net. Jibs where he should jab with the gaff—or
whatever. It's no good.
"It's the same pattern here. I've seen him at home, or in the Óstán Dún an Óir, in complete mastery of his
material, playing his accordion like six-handed Shiva. The tourists had no idea what they were getting with
their Guinness! But…"
"Here he isn't doing that?"
Martha swayed against the white bar of the paling. "Mmph? Okay, I guess. But he's scared and miserable,
and he plays like a boy that's scared and miserable. He hears himself and knows it's no good. Round the
circle. What is it Teddy says?
" 'What goes around "
"Oh, yes. 'Comes around.'" She touched his mouth with her fingers. "How could I have forgotten?"
Mayland Long sighed. He swiped his nose once more and dismissed the problems of Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin.
Leaning gracefully over the rail, he looked for seals. Skin divers went out from the beach, walking like ducks
and delighting Marty Frisch-Macnamara. She threw popcorn to them as they passed beside the pier. For an
hour the only concern among the small party was the wind in Martha's skirt.
"Judy doesn't like old George." Marty made this announcement as they were halfway back to the motel room.
Her grandmother sighed. "Why should Judy be any different than the vast majority of humanity?"
Long looked down at the little girl he was carrying. "Who is… Martha Rachel Frisch-Macnamara, where are
your sunglasses?"
She slapped her eyes with both palms and made an outsize grimace of astonishment. "I have no idea,
Daddo. No idea in the slightest!"
Martha took her and set her on her feet. "Sometimes she sounds so like Elizabeth I get the chills!" She saw
Long looking intently back the way they had come and said, "Don't bother. We went the whole length of the
pier and across the beach and a busy street. Probably by now they're at the bottom…"
But he had already turned back and was halfway across the street against the light, moving between the cars
smoothly, with an odd dignity. Martha watched him slide through the beach crowds, avoiding all touch, yet
with his gaze fixed on the far end of the pier. Could he see the ground that far in front of him? Could anyone?
Martha shook her head. There was no telling what he could do. Here he was, so fine, learned, and wealthy: a
live-in babysitter for a three-year-old. Taking beginning keyboard lessons. A millionaire road manager for a
group that toured in a dilapidated van.
It was all so splendid that she laughed aloud.
Marty looked up resentfully. Like most people, she disapproved of private jokes. "Judy gets scared a lot. Not
like me."
Marty had been with the group for four days, long enough for Martha to learn something of her grandchild's
outgoing nature. "Is Judy a hotel maid or is she a waitress?"
Marty snorted, sounding just like her grandmother. "Ní h'ea.";
Martha translated this negative in her mind. "So Pádraig has been teaching you Irish. That's nice."
Marty grimaced again at the extent of adult stupidity. "Not Pádraig, Martha. Daddo. Only, it's Chinese."
Martha didn't think so, but she didn't want to belabor the point.
"And did he tell you to call him 'daddo'? Did he tell you what it means?"
The little girl nodded strenuously. "It means 'grandfather.'"
Then Martha set her lips and stared after Long, whom she could no longer see.
"Worshipping at the source of all earthly energy?"
Martha gave a little jump. It was Ted standing behind them, the wind blowing through the layers of his hair. He
was smiling, and though his face was young, the skin around the corners of his eyes crinkled. He wore
shorts and rubber thongs on his feet and nothing else. He looked rather like a young sun god himself, and his
exposed skin was the color of fresh cherrywood.
Californians, she said to herself. "Actually, Marty and I are keeping off His Worship with para-aminobenzoic
acid. We burn."
"The skin comes off my nose," said Marty in corrobo-ration.
He nodded and then sat down on the pavement next to Marty, forcing passersby to step out into the street.
Martha was about to say something about this when she noticed that none of the people inconvenienced
looked in the slightest put out.
Californians.
"That's a bummer. But, you know, it gets better. Just you lard that stuff on every time you go out, and the sun
will get in so slowly that you'll turn without ever burning."
"To turn is casadh,"; said the girl. "In Irish, it is."
Martha stifled an impulse to contradict Marty and say the word was Chinese.
Ted's dark innocent eyes went even more innocent. "Is it? Like to turn brown, you mean?"
"To turn anything. To turn a tune, fr'insanse."
It occurred to Martha that Teddy was sailing very near the wind, discussing things with Marty. She was very
demanding of grown-ups. If he had shown the least hint of condescension… If he had let her tell him things he
already knew. But he never did that; Ted Poznan was a great favorite of Marty's. Martha was encouraged to
add her bit of education to Marty's little store. "That's our theme song, Marty. 'Casadh an t'Súgáin': 'Twisting
the Rope.' We play it twice every night: fast and slow."
"I know that."
Martha wondered if the dismissive quality in Marty's reply came because she hadn't sat down on the
pavement, like Teddy.
"I talked to George." Ted looked up at Martha. "I think we can get our friend straightened out."
Martha would never have called George St. Ives her friend, much as she respected his music. But neither
would she have dared to talk about straightening him out. She said nothing.
"I think he's blocked inside, and then lashes out in pain. Anyone would. Once he opens up, the great, good
things can come in: like the sunlight."
Ted spoke with real enthusiasm. Martha felt a sudden question in her mind whether he was very intelligent.
He was an accomplished guitarist, but she well knew that musical ability was a thing apart. She tried to
imagine George St. Ives's bulky and usually unwashed body naked under sunlight. Her mind's eye, forced in
this manner, wanted the image to go away.
"Did you tell him this?"
"Yeah, I did. And, you know, we really communicated."
Martha blinked. She stooped and began to sit down on the pavement next to him when she remembered her
troublesome skirt. "He didn't curse you out or tell you to mind your own business?"
Ted beamed up at her. He seemed quite comfortable with their difference in stations. "No, Roshi. George
doesn't—"
"Don't call me that." Martha's voice was quite sharp.
"Sure thing, Martha. No. George doesn't pull that on me. Or if he does, I don't notice. Flow-through, you
know? Flow-through.
"And I really think I can help him."
Martha stared out at the sea, which, from this angle, was bright as aluminum foil. "In the five days left on this
tour?"
"Sure. Enlightenment is instantaneous, you know."
Martha bit back her angry retort. She managed to say with reasonable calm, "Why? Why bother with him?
You never met him before last month."
Ted turned his face up to the sun and closed his eyes. A fly landed on his forehead. He ignored it. "George
St. Ives is a great musician and an old soul: a repository of the real tradition. I want to do what I can."
What "real tradition," Martha wanted to know. It was her understanding that St. Ives had learned from
sessions and assorted recordings, just as she had, and as had most living "traditional musicians." In fact,
she could name at least six pieces he did where his sources were in her own extensive disk library. And, she
had known his aunt, in Ottawa, and was in some position to separate the man from his image.
She decided to keep this question to herself. After all,
George was a very good piper, and perhaps her own resentment stemmed from nothing more than that
George had a habit of fighting his way into her solos.
"Here comes the Dragon," said Ted.
Martha started and spun around, to see Long coming toward them, making his bullfighter's progress through
traffic.
"Why do you call him that?" she asked very tightly.
Ted rocked with amusement. "That's what his name— Long—means in Chinese. Isn't that great? Don't you
think it really fits him too? You know, like when he's looking over a new arrangement or an instrument he
hasn't seen before and his eyes positively glow with passion to have it?"
"Passion?" Martha echoed weakly.
"Yeah. Real passion. Age doesn't matter a bit, Martha."
Then Long was with them, and the missing sunglasses were in his hand. He greeted Ted, who bestowed
upon the group one last slosh of sleepy affection and then was gone. "One of the earpieces has suffered a
little, but no irreparable damage."
Martha took them without looking. "Do you know what Ted just said to me, Mayland? He said age doesn't
matter."
Long shot a burning glance at the young man's back. "Impudent puppy. It certainly does matter!"
"Oh, well, don't be upset by it," said Martha. "How could he know? He's only in his twenties. Scarcely older
than Pádraig. But doesn't Ted have an appealing smile, my dear?"
Then, in the same tone, she added, "I wonder if he's on something?"
"Casadh an t'Súgáin"
I feel that I have to… to make up for twenty years of practice that I haven't had." Pádraig put his flute down on
the dressing room table. The old rosewood tube had but one key and a worn silver mouthpiece. The Paolo
Santori button accordion which lay next to it was brand-new and bright red.
"Well, you can't," stated Elen Evans, sitting herself beside him. "So don't bang your head against walls." She
gazed at nothing-at-all in the corner of the dressing room. "Besides, Pat, you don't need to."
Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin had a baby face. He set his smallish mouth stubbornly. "I missed the bridge last night
that Martha wrote out for me and everything. Nobody else has to get music written out for them. You do it all
yourself."
Elen had to giggle. "You got it a bit different, that's all, ducks. Seriously, how could anyone but me arrange
things for this one-of-a-kind dinosaur I play? Martha gave you that bridge because you asked her to, and
though it was pretty nice of her, it was no better than the kind of thing you fuss around with, and probably lots
harder to finger. After all, it's not her instrument.
"And believe me, Pat—no one but ourselves dreamed there was anything amiss last night, and we only knew
because you practiced the thing so much. Too much, I think."
"George knew, and that was what counts."
Hearing St. Ives's name, Elen sat quite still for a moment. Then she propped an ankle over the opposite knee
and played with the flounce of her skirt. "Diddle St. Ives, Pat. He's a cancer to all concerned. In fact, let me
be nice and catty for a moment: he's not who Martha wanted for the tour. I myself might have thought twice
about coming, had I known he'd be in the group."
Pádraig looked up from his sulk. "You say he's not who Martha wanted? There was someone else?"
Since Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin ended all his questions on a fall of the voice, it took Elen a fraction of a second
to realize they were questions. "Folsom," she replied. "Seán Folsom. We were set up until a month before
the tour and bang! He's got a cracked spine. Fell off a roof. St. Ives was what she could get."
A smile touched Pádraig's face, like a glimpse of sun on a dark day. He hit her on the upper arm, rather too
hard. "She only asked him then? She asked me six months before. She asked me first." But he was
immediately sober again.
"You say you wouldn't have come. But you came after all."
She shrugged. "I couldn't let Martha Macnamara down: not for any reason. I wouldn't, for one thing. She's too
decent a lady. And then professionally, it'd be the kiss of death, wouldn't it? Everyone knows she's good, and
she fulfills her promises. Both to the houses and to the people she works with. So I gave a great sigh and
said 'La!' And here I am."
"I'm glad," said Pádraig, and then he looked away. "But I think it isn't Martha herself who keeps everything
right but her boyfriend."
Elen grinned, and this encouragement was enough to induce Pádraig to add, "And they aren't married, are
they?"
Elen Evans sat up straight on the hard bench. "I'm sure I never asked. They don't project that image, as Ted
might say, but I never thought it my business…"
Pádraig shot her a glance almost gleeful in its mischief. "But isn't it funny? They are not young kids, to be
getting in trouble. Why are they at it?"
Elen opened her mouth but no sound came out for some seconds. Pádraig laughed aloud at the expression
on her face. At last she clapped both long-nailed hands on her knees and said, "My dear infant, how long
have you been out?"
The baby face went bleak again and he turned half away. "Not long enough to play with Macnamara's Band.
Martha knew I blew it too."
Evans hit her knees again, much harder. "You moron! More of that, Sullivan, and I'll haul back and hit you
one."
Pádraig had pulled back one sleeve of his dazzling sweater and was scratching a red spot on his forearm.
"Go ahead. I'm not worth anything anyway."
With complete spontaneity Elen did so, slamming him in the center of the chest with her right fist. Pádraig
fell backward, landing on his rear on the concrete floor. Elen hopped, cursed, and licked her palm, where her
sharp harper's nails had bit into her hand. Then she saw Pádraig flat out on the concrete staring up at her.
"Pat! What have I done? I've hurt you!" She got down on her knees and put her wounded hand behind his
head.
"Not at all. I fell over from the surprise of it," he said, disentangling his legs from the bench. He grinned and
blushed simultaneously. "It was a rotten hit. No strength in it."
"I'm not in practice. My aggressions are more subtle." Elen got up and dusted off the lavender cotton of her
skirt. With a moment's alarm she made sure the fall had not done harm to any of the instruments that had
been left in the room for the afternoon. She pushed back her little curls of hair and sighed. "Let's take a
walk."
Landaman Hall was as much a theater as a concert hall, and as in many theaters, the back of the stage
opened directly onto a loading dock, which was usually closed by roll-up steel doors. These were on the east
side, and barely visible along the alley that ran between the Hall and the supermarket which adjoined.
As Martha and company passed in front of the build ing on their way back to the motel from the beach, Long
happened to look in and see a square of darkness where the doors hung. "That's odd," he said and strolled
down the alley, still carrying Marty.
Martha had been a few steps in front, and his sudden diversion took her aback. "What's odd?" She followed
him into the cool shadow of the alley. It was chilly, after the sun, and pleasant to the skin.
The right-hand door was open, and she could look up into the ceiling of the backstage. No lower, though,
because she was not a tall woman and the dock was high. "Don't they know we left our sound equipment in
there? Or is Santa Cruz so faultlessly honest…?"
Long chuckled and expressed disbelief. Setting Marty on her feet, he grabbed the lip of the dock in his hands
and heaved up.
There was the disheartening hiss and pull of silk unraveling. He dropped again and stared at the rusty bolt
which had caught his jacket front. "Oh, damn," he said very primly, and sought about in his pocket.
"It can be mended," said Martha, but Long was too involved to pay attention. He drew out a pigskin box about
half the size of a cigarette case. It had some very pretty little nail trimmers in it, and a small pair of scissors,
and also stainless-steel tweezers, which he took out and held at the very tips of his long fingers. With
surgical care he reached into the tangle of hanging threads and puckered fabric and pulled.
Fascinated, both Marty and her grandmother watched one thread after another sucked back into its place in
the weave. Long's face was hard with concentration. At last he let out a sigh and snapped the pigskin case
closed. '"It will never be the same," he said, and gave one more rueful glance at the dock.
"I'll use the door after the approved manner."
Martha thought that was just as well, considering not only the dirt but also the possibility that thieves had
opened the door up there. If one had to walk in on thieves, one could at least avoid doing so head first,
clawing at the concrete. Besides, there was a large stone or cement pediment of some kind, tilted at a nasty
angle over the edge of the dock. Being theatrical in nature, it was probably papier-mache, and it did have a
cable wrapped around its middle, holding it in, but still…
It piqued Mr. Long that he had not been given the key to the Hall. Most managements along the tour had
been more trusting. Or more realistic. It was mere luck, now, that he found a man vacuuming the lobby, and it
was sheer persistence that made him continue his rapping on the glass door until the fellow heard him over
the racket of his machine. He was a colorless man dressed in janitorial drab.
Infuriating. The fellow refused to admit the dock gate was open. No one had been in the theater all day except
himself and the musicians, and the big steel gates were never opened except for deliveries. He did give Long
the key from the front stage to backstage.
The carpet and seats of Landaman Hall were dark blue plush, which exuded odors musty and a feeling of chill
restraint. The woodwork, in the orchestra pit and up the sides of the stage, was gray. The walls were white,
but of course in the dim light they appeared gray also, and Mr. Long felt a moment's doubt that Macnamara's
Band would be able to infuse warmth into such a sepulchral chamber. Especially with the lack of warmth
existing within the group itself.
But one would never know that, he reflected as he went through the doorway that led to the stage-left stairs.
On stage, they gave the impression that they were one mind and one heart, and even the creaky little digs
and puns with which they filled the time between numbers seemed imbued with family feeling.
Six weeks ago it had seemed that Pádraig Ó Súille-abháin's rough antics and awkwardness around Elen
Evans would prevent any lasting peace—not that they showed it on stage. Eight weeks ago St. Ives had
spent his days gazing at Weird Teddy Poznan with clear and steady loathing. That had been before Pádraig's
Celtic cachet had worn off. And Elen, too, had exchanged some muted hisses with Teddy over sound levels.
Who would have thought the great antagonism of the tour (and Martha said at least one was inevitable) would
have been St. Ives versus Pádraig?
Long crossed the waxed, white-wood stage, stepping neatly around the swags of rope and the black cables
of their own equipment. Perhaps, he thought, it was more accurately stated St. Ives versus Everybody. He
yawned. Coughed.
The wall which divided the front stage from the back was jointed and ran in tracks in the floor and ceiling. It
was padlocked shut, but set into one of its sections was a door of normal size and shape, with a Yale lock in
it. A stiff double loop of black cable peeked from beneath the door, and Long wondered if it was part of the
band's equipage. If so, then perhaps there had been thieves. He glanced over his shoulder at the bulky boxes
on stage: the tuners, the amps, the complex gear that made it possible for Elen's triple harp to compete
against the sound of the pipes. It appeared intact. He turned the key in the lock and touched the doorknob—
Which flew out of his hand. Long snapped face-front in time to see the entire wooden door flying away from
him across the day-lit backstage, as though it had taken wing. It was a sight designed to engrave itself upon
a man's memory: the upright rectangle, with empty brass hinges on one side and brass knob at the other,
outlined starkly against the larger rectangle of the open dock gate, with an open trunk full of pipes at the right
edge of the rectangle, looking like a sea trap overflowing with crustaceans, and the white wall of the
supermarket beyond. Surreal. Dada. Perfect Magritte.
Then Long himself was picked up by the foot and slammed to the floor. He landed on his side, and his head
was only saved from impact by his flailing right arm. The same incomprehensible force which had sucked
away the door rushed him across the dirty floor of the backstage, past the trunk and toward the open dock.
He heard a crash which did not sound like wood and he heard Marty cry out. He saw that the thing which had
him was the black cable that had been stretched under the door. He curled into a ball, and twisted the snag
from his foot, but as he came free he went over the concrete dock and into space.
The lip of the dock was below Long, and by instinct he grabbed on to it. So large were his spindle-fingered
hands, and so strong, that his grip held, and Mr. Long came to earth feet first, slamming his stomach and the
side of his face only slightly against the side of the dock.
There was Martha, standing two feet to the right of him, holding Marty against her. Martha's mouth was wide
open, showing her very nice teeth.
Marty wore a small replica of her grandmother's expression. "Daddo!" she cried, and hopped in place. "How
wonderful! Do it again."
"Don't you dare," said Martha. "Whatever it was, Mayland, once was enough." She glanced from him to the
door, which had come apart, to the pulverized pediment that had first gone over the edge.
Long released his grip on the dock. His hands were scraped and the left one was a touch bloody. He felt a
sore spot over his left cheekbone. His clothing was very dusty.
He peered left and right. "At least," he said in a shaky voice, "at least this time I missed the bolt in the wall."
Mr. Long stepped back from the dock.
At his feet lay the door, which had come unlaminated. He took it by the knob (somewhat gingerly) and lifted it
to examine the other side.
There was more of that black cable, snarled—no, tied—to the other side of the knob. A foot away from that
knot was another which seemed to do nothing but tie off a fifteen-foot loop of the stuff. The far end of the cable
lay in a pile of shards, gravel, and stone dust. "That was a little pillar," offered Martha. "That toppled over the
side here.
The black cord was tied around it." With both hands Martha prevented Marty from making her own
investigations.
Long stood back and surveyed the whole mess. "No pins in the door," he said, and shook his head in
wonder. "By all the auspices! A trap."
"It might have killed someone," said Martha.
"It most certainly might have killed someone," said Long, rubbing his face.
There was a howl of profanity from up on the loading dock, and they all glanced over to see the theater janitor,
whose pale face was livid. "What the hell is going on here?" he roared, gesturing grandly over the wreckage.
No one had an answer for him.
"It would help if the janitor could remember exactly which of us had been going in and out this morning," said
Martha, sitting on the toilet seat lid with an expression of worry on her face.
Mr. Long was in the bathtub, soaking his battered body. He stared at the shower head with his eyes
unfocused. Occasionally he made small sounds of discomfort. "Of us, Martha? Does the deed proclaim itself
the work of one of Macnamara's Band? That fellow doesn't strike me as the best watchdog to be had. Any
demented soul—"
"Setting a trap for a perfect stranger? Possible, I guess. But"—Martha clapped her hands on her knees—
"there is no crazy like a crazy musician."
Long let his gaze drift from Martha to the shower curtain and thence down to his toes, which were sticking
out of the water: very dark. "Not for a perfect stranger. There was reason to expect someone in particular to
be using that door."
"Huh?"
Long closed his eyes and recalled the tableau of the sailing door once more. "In the far corner of that back
room was St. Ives's music trunk, filled with pipes. I noticed it on my trip through."
"Ouch," said Martha, in reference to Long's short flight, and then "Ouch!" in a different tone, as the implica
tions struck her. "And yet you still think it wasn't one of the band?"
He stirred, making warm waves that sloshed over his scraped cheekbone. "I think rather that we can't know.
Unless someone tells us. Or we call the police in."
Martha's face tightened. "Jesus! Do you think we should?"
Long, in contrast, closed his eyes. "I have been thinking about it. Had it not been myself who touched that
door… Had it been George, he might have been killed. Had it been Marty…" Long scowled and nudged open
the hot-water faucet with his left foot. "But I'm inclined to believe that the catching of the foot was not really
part of the joke as planned. Perhaps the punch line was only to make a person—George, let's say—stand
like a fool while a part of his usual reality suddenly behaved in very unusual fashion. The door, however, had a
large gap at the bottom—a carpet had been there, possibly—and the finished setup turned out to be about
ten feet too long to work. Hence the knot and the loop under the door."
Martha looked very dubious. "So no police?"
Long shook his head and sedately lowered his head under the waves.
Pádraig seemed to have a great deal of difficulty understanding. "To play a trick on Mayland?" Naw, he's the
last person I'd rag. Now, Ellie here. She'd be great sport to tease." He poked the harper in the ribs. She did
not look pleased.
Martha tried again to explain that the joke was probably not intended for Long, but for George, but that it was
a badly thought out and dangerous joke anyway. Halfway through her explanation, she realized she was
assuming Pádraig was the joker, and that it wasn't fair. Her explanation faded off.
Pádraig didn't look offended, however. He leaned against the south door of the theater with his hands in his
pockets and he nodded all the while she spoke.
"Terrible. Was the old man much hurt? A shame, if it was supposed to be George."
摘要：

TwistingtheRope R.A.MacAvoy OfftoCaliforniaTheblowrangthroughthemotelroom,freezingsixofthesevenpeoplewithinitinmidmotion.TheodorePoznanhadabrushwetwithnailpolishinhislefthand,whiletheindexfingerofhisrightwasstifflypointingattheceiling.Hishair,bleachedinlayersfromstrawtomediumbrown,slidforwardoffhiss...

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