Intermission Time

“That’s good enough. I don’t know if I have, either. Some people have the most fantastic views of their own accomplishments. I wondered about you.

“We were all pleased to learn you were coming. Papa Sosnic especially. He wants to hear you; he’ll be around this afternoon.”

“Papa Sosnic?”

“The dean of the group; claims to be the first member. He’s almost ninety years old. He’s looking for the Great Musician and the Great Music before he dies. He claims the colonies are sterile and have never produced any. But you’ll hear all of that from his own lips. Tell me about your music.”

John shrugged. “It has been a living.”

“Is that all? Don’t you like your music?”

He smiled wanly and told Warnock about his childhood with Doris, who had a dream for them both. He told how she had beat him into submission and forced him to endless practice when he was little.

“And so you hate your music,” said Warnock.

“No.” John shook his head. “That’s the strange part of it. I should, but I don’t.”

“Why?”

“That’s hard to say. I’ve never tried to tell anyone, especially Doris; she would never understand why I go on playing.”

“Can you tell me?” said Warnock.

John found himself doing that, without understanding why. Warnock seemed to him as vast in comprehension as in physical body, and John’s feelings spilled.

“The writers, the poets, and the artists have all been men,” he said. “The great ones, that is. A woman can’t be a great artist. But I could never tell Doris that. It’s a man’s way of crying and laughing, and saying that the world is a good and happy place; that’s why he makes music and writes books and paints pictures.

“A woman doesn’t have to do that; she can’t. She has a thousand other ways. But a man is supposed to be a mute dumb animal who never thinks of these things. Some of us stumble onto the acceptable way of saying what we have inside.”

“Your sister,” said Warnock, “why do you suppose she plays?”

John shook his head and smiled. “She doesn’t understand music. She plays through her head — not her heart.”

“She takes the lead in all your work. Why do you let her do that?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t understand if I tried to tell her how I want to play; I guess I’m afraid that no one else would understand either.”

“I think Papa Sosnic will understand,” said Warnock. He arose suddenly and extended a hand. “He will be around to see you. And your housing-assignments are being made. We will let you know.”

John felt guilty as he walked back to the apartment. He had said things that should not have been said; he had no right to speak of Doris as he had. But his regret faded before the recurring thought of Lora.

He had almost burst out his problem to Warnock, so strongly had the director invited confidence. But he felt relief now that he had not. Warnock had received Bronson’s report of the incident, of course; but if he chose to ignore it, John could do no better.

But it left him no one at all to speak with about Lora, and in this there was panic and loneliness. From the apartment window he contrasted the Elysian peace of the landscape with the hateful jungle beyond the dome. He had to get Lora out of there, and he had no idea how it might be done.

Doris was out. Papa Sosnic came in the afternoon. He knocked once, bird-like, and entered without waiting for John to open the door.

White-haired and white-bearded, he was a wispy little man as old as an elf. The skin of his hands was like webbing. There was a squeakiness in his voice, but it still held a patriarchal authority.

He introduced himself. “I want to hear you play. I want to know if you are a musician, or just another babbler.”

John smiled in friendly regard for the bustling little old man. “You’ve heard my records,” he said. “You know how I play.”

“But I know nothing,” said Sosnic. “How much of a man’s soul can be put on plastic? And besides, all I’ve heard has been with your sister taking the lead. A wee, timid little boy walking in the shadows where the sun won’t scorch and the rain won’t wet. Sit down and let me hear you play.”

All at once John found himself trembling, ever so slightly, as if a great secret had been found out and he had no place in which to hide.

Then he sat at the keyboard and his fear was gone. He felt in the presence of a friend with whom he could talk as he had never talked before. He began playing softly, a Beethoven Sonata. But after a dozen measures Papa Sosnic threw up his hands.

He almost screeched. “Play! Doris is not here now. Play the music.”

John began again. He held nothing back; he did not play as if Doris were there with her cold, intellectual timing, criticizing his every stroke. He altered the timing, and modulated his touch so that the music no longer drew a diagram with mathematical precision.

It painted a picture new, and told a story. And somehow it became the story of Lora. He sketched the fine sweet lines of her profile as he had seen her in the dim light of the engineer’s catwalk.