CHAPTER 22

They once showed here, at Wittenberg, the drawers of St. Joseph and the breeches of St. Francis. The bishop of Mayence boasted he had a gleam of the flame of Moses’ bush.

Martin Luther

Waking up the next morning in his messy apartment on Russell Street, Alan felt his confidence sag. A sleety rain was falling. It was a day for pessimists. Was Rosie Hall alive or dead? On a morning like this, Charley’s cry of Mama seemed only a squeak beside the roar of the evidence on the other side.

He got dressed and ate some healthy cereal his mother had given him. The chunky grains were hard to swallow without milk. Looking out the window he could see the rain turning to ice. Alan didn’t own a winter parka, in spite of his mother’s constant concern about his wardrobe. Strong men don’t wear overcoats. What a dumb idea. What a jerk. He didn’t have an umbrella either, having left it somewhere. He pulled on three sweaters and a windbreaker and ran up Russell Street and down Myrtle, taking a couple of hard falls on the icy sidewalk.

At the Church of the Commonwealth rain rushed along the gutters, poured down the copper drainpipes and gushed into the gravel-filled ditches below. All over the Back Bay, janitors and building superintendents were congratulating themselves on the natural recharging of the water table. At Trinity the building manager turned off the expensive supply of city water pouring into the manhole. Perhaps it was the start of a normal winter.

Alan was glad to throw open the door and shake himself like a wet dog inside the warm church. The stairs to the balcony were dim, and he had to feel his way upward in his squelching sneakers. The sanctuary too was dark. In the stained-glass window to the south the Three Kings knelt in a murky purple fen.

Pip Tower was waiting for Alan. He seemed energetic and excited, unaffected by the dismal weather. He sat cheerfully at the console and began the tedious job of depressing keys, while Alan huddled among the pipes, working on them one by one. “C-sharp?” called Alan. “D-sharp?”

Kneeling beside the rank of four-foot Chimney Flutes, Alan glowered at the open mouth of the pipe and found himself wondering why churches existed at all. They didn’t do anything in particular. All they provided were Sunday morning lectures, a mysterious set of hieratic gestures, some meaningless gettings-up and sittings-down, a succession of foolish hymns, and occasionally (it was true) a little good music. The Protestant church as it existed in Boston at the turn of the second millennium was a withered survival from centuries past, a vermiform appendix on the social body of the state.

Yet there was Martin Kraeger, somewhere downstairs, shouting cheerfully in his powerful bellow. From the deep crevasse of Alan’s morning cynicism he wondered if Kraeger’s forceful manner was false heartiness—a clap on the back, a bone-crushing handshake—nothing more. And then his inner vision shifted, and he saw again the blazing car and heard Rosie scream. If things like that could happen, how could any clergyman make sense of it? Alan blew into a two-inch pipe and it peeped like a chicken.

There was a call from Pip Tower. “Hey, Alan, I’ve got to go”

“Wait a sec,” said Alan, “I’m coming out.” He worked his way along the catwalk beside the Chimney Flutes, taking care not to brush against them, knowing they would bend like flowers.

Pip pulled off his sweatshirt, revealing a shirt and tie. “My God,” said Alan, “what’s that for?”

“The audition,” said Pip. “Didn’t you know? It starts in ten minutes.” Nervously he pulled on a blazer with gold buttons. His hands were trembling.

“No kidding.” Alan grinned at him. “Well, don’t worry. You’re the best there is.” Unless by some fluke Harold Oates turns up. Alan shuddered at the thought, and Pip ran softly down the stairs.

So the rest of the morning would be wasted. Loretta Fawcett’s schedule for the use of the organ was worse than useless. There was nothing on the schedule about the audition. Alan should have remembered it himself, but since he was an organ builder rather than a professional organist, he had no intention of trying out. This morning he had hoped to finish the voicing of two more ranks, but there was no chance of it now. He sat down on the bench and played the whole Chimney Flute scale on manual two. Yes, it was all right, bright and crisp, with a barely audible chiff.

Then for the hell of it he pulled out a showy collection of stops, including Castle’s joke stop, DIV INSP, and launched into Handel’s “Entry of the Queen of Sheba.” He played it with cynical fervor as the composer had never intended it to be performed, with continuously changing registration, piling this mutation on top of that. Hilariously he threw in the Zimbelstern and the Glockenspiel and then he invented a ridiculous coda of hippity-hops like leapfrogging rabbits and a mighty set of pedal octaves. The Queen of Sheba entered Solomon’s throne room, a towering woman thirty feet tall, accompanied by a thousand slaves with ostrich feather fans and two thousand warriors in brazen helmets. As a final flourish Alan snatched out the stop for Trumpets en Chamade. The din was terrific, yet every rank sounded clear, the resolution of one stop from another was precise. The pandemonium was not a swarm of giant wasps, it was this note and that note, every one distinguishable from every other. Hail, O queen, all hail!

As the last mad blast pierced the air, Alan lifted his arms high and listened for the echo, but instead there was a flutter of applause. Was Harold Oates down there again? Turning, Alan saw a row of people standing in the aisle below, looking up at him. They were beaming. One was Edith Frederick. Old man Partridge was there, and couple of portly men in dark suits.

Alan waved at them, then shoved all the stop knobs back in place, turned off the organ, switched off the light over the music rack, slid sideways off the bench, snatched up his windbreaker, and ran down to the vestibule, where he found a cluster of old friends—Pip in his gold-buttoned blazer, Barbara Inch, Peggy Throstle, Jack Newcomb and Arthur Washington.

They were the auditioners, waiting to be summoned. “Listen,” said Alan, “you’ve only got a dozen stops. I’ll make a list. Has anybody got a piece of paper?”

They stared at him blankly. “My God, was that you?” said Jack.

“Me? Oh, you mean the Queen of Sheba? Hey, how did you like the Principal eight? I threw in everything but the kitchen sink.”

“We noticed,” said Pip dryly. Barbara smiled at him faintly. Peggy Throstle said, “Honestly, Alan,” as if in anger, and Arthur turned his back and stared at a plaque on the wall dedicated to the memory of the saintly Walter Wiggles-worth.

“Who’s going to be next?” said Mrs. Frederick, pushing open the door to the sanctuary, smiling at them brightly. “Which of you is Miss Inch?”

“I am,” said Barbara, and she started up the balcony stairs, clutching her music.

Mrs. Frederick disappeared, and they all waited silently for Barbara to begin. When she did, she fumbled the opening measure and had to start over. Alan winced, but he could imagine that the others were thinking, All the better for me.

The rest of Barbara’s performance was creditable. Alan stood with the others listening, head down. When Barbara came downstairs, shaking her head, they all clapped politely and reassured her. “It was great,” said Peggy Throstle. “No, it wasn’t,” said Barbara.

Jack Newcomb was next. He played a showy toccata by Widor, with all Alan’s available stops pulled out and the shutters of the Swell box wide open. “Wow,” said Alan kindly, when Jack came down, looking pale, his arms shaking. Then it was Peggy Throstles turn. “God,” she said, climbing the stairs, “my fingers are so cold.” Peggy had chosen a concerto by Vivaldi, but it was too difficult. She muffed it badly, and came downstairs trying not to cry. Barbara put an arm around her and made soothing noises. Unfortunately Peggy’s failure unnerved Arthur Washington, and he made a hash of his fantasy by Franck.

Pip Tower was last. Pip was magnificent. His Bach Toccata and Fugue was precise, the variations eloquent, the final movement overwhelming, his performance flawless from beginning to end.

When he came down, beaming, the applause from his rivals was genuine. “No contest,” said Arthur Washington generously. Barbara said, “Proud to know you,” Peggy hugged him tearfully, Alan clapped him on the back, and Jack did his best not to show his disappointed envy.

Alan wished them all good luck and started home, trudging in his damp sneakers back to Russell Street. It had stopped raining, but the wind was raw and penetrating. At home he hauled off his wet clothes, draped them here and there, and pulled on a dry shirt and a wrinkled pair of pants. Then he began going through his closet, looking for something decent to lend to Harold Oates, wondering how to get him out of the shelter where he holed up every night.

When the phone rang, he answered it absentmindedly, while examining a doubtful pair of khaki trousers. It was Mrs. Frederick. She was eager and vivacious. “Alan, dear, I want to be the first to tell you, we have unanimously chosen you as our interim organist. We want you to take over right away.”

Alan spluttered into the phone, “But I wasn’t auditioning this morning. You misunderstood. I was just testing the voicing.”

“I don’t care what you were doing, it was marvelous. That’s the sort of music we want at the Church of the Commonwealth.”

Oh, God, they didn’t understand a damn thing about it. Alan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Mrs. Frederick, I’m not looking for a job. Philip Tower is a far better musician than I am. Or Barbara Inch, she’s really good too.”

“Alan Starr, we want you to play our splendid new organ. After all, you’re already more familiar with it than anyone else.”

“But Philip—”

Mrs. Frederick’s voice turned frosty. “I’m afraid he is out of the question. My dear Alan, don’t you understand? You’re the one we want. May we consider it settled?”

Alan was torn. He felt uneasy about being chosen through the committee’s total lack of musical judgment. And, good God, poor Pip! But then it occurred to him that the generous salary would pay for housing for the greatest organist of them all, Harold Oates. “Well, thank you, Mrs. Frederick. I’m grateful.”

“Oh, I’m so glad. I know Jim will be pleased.”

“Jim Castle? Have you heard from him? Do you know where he is?”

“Oh, no. I mean, he’ll be so pleased when he comes back to know we chose you to fill in.”

“Oh, I see.” Alan was disappointed. Where in the hell was Castle?

He hung up politely, and at once guilt overwhelmed him. He remembered the scandalized faces of the auditioners after his crazy escapade with the Queen of Sheba, all that silly tinkling of the Zimbelstern and the cuckoo clucking of the Glockenspiel. They must have thought he was throwing in that cornball registration for the benefit of the Frederick Endowment trustees. Alone in his apartment, Alan felt his face flush with embarrassment.

He called Barbara. It was plain that she had already heard from Mrs. Frederick. “Oh, hello, Alan,” she said, her voice sounding strained.

“Look, I wasn’t trying out. I didn’t know those people were downstairs listening. I was just testing the voicing. I threw in every nutty combination I could think of. I went a little silly.”

Barbara laughed. “Well, I’m glad to hear it. I didn’t think it sounded like you. And don’t worry about me. It’s still not hopeless. They’re going to hire a choir director. There’ll be a tryout with the choir and an interview. It’s the interview that worries me. They’ll ask if I’m married, and I’m going to invent a boyfriend, so they won’t think I’m a lesbian.”

“Are you a lesbian?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure. Listen, Alan, it’s not me that feels gypped. It’s Pip. He’s going to be so disgusted.”

Alan hung up, feeling worse than ever. He screwed up his courage and dialed Pip’s number. Would he be home yet? Probably. All the auditioners would have hurried home to await the verdict. Alan hoped to God he had already heard the bad news.

But Pip’s “Hello” was too eager. Quickly Alan asked if he had heard from Mrs. Frederick. He had not. “Who’s this?” he said, sounding irritated. “Alan Starr?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry to tell you, they chose me. Now listen—”

“You! They chose you? My God!”

“Listen, Pip, I didn’t know they were there when I played that damn thing. I was just trying out crazy combinations of stops to see what they sounded like.”

“Oh, sure.” Pip’s voice was thick. “They chose you. My God.”

“They were wrong, of course,” said Alan, trying to explain himself. “I told Mrs. Frederick they should have picked you.”

“But you’re taking the job, right?” said Pip angrily. “You couldn’t turn it down.”

“Well, yes, but don’t forget it’s only temporary, just until Castle gets back. And there’s a permanent opening at Annunciation, Barbara Inch’s old job.”

“They’ve already got someone,” said Pip bitterly. “They promoted the principal tenor. It seems his hobby is playing tiddly bits on the organ. Another great Music Committee.”

Dismayed, Alan fell silent, and Pip crashed down the phone. There was a savage click in Alan’s ear.