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Mr. Sigerson

by Peter S. Beagle

I'm very proud of this story—written for Michael Kirland's anthology Sherlock

Holmes: The Hidden Tears —because it's my first mystery tale, and so far

the only one.

I love reading mysteries, all sorts, and envy their authors almost as much

as I envy musicians. I'd give a great deal to have the special mindset that

creates a good mys-tery plot, and then peoples it with characters whom the

reader feels don't draw their existence only from the plot. I'm no Holmes

expert (though I've known the stories from childhood, and read them all

aloud to my children); but I felt I knew the man well enough to chance

presenting him through the eyes of a narrator who not only doesn't worship

his brilliance but doesn't particularly like him. As much as anything I've

done recently, I truly enjoyed being that crotchety, sardonic concertmaster,

who admires Sherlock Holmes solely for his musical gifts, and to hell with

the rest of the performance.

* * *

My name is Floresh Takesti. I am concertmaster of the Greater Bornitz

Municipal Orchestra in the town of St. Radomir, in the Duchy of Bornitz in

the country of Selmira. I state this only because, firstly, there is a

cen-turies-old dispute between our ducal family and the neighboring

princi-pality of Gradja over boundaries, bribed surveyors, and exactly who

some people think they are; and, secondly, because Bornitz, greater or

lesser, is quite a small holding, and has very little that can honestly be

said to be its own. Our national language is a kind of untidy Low German,

cluttered further by Romanian irregular verbs; our history appears to be

largely accidental, and our literature consists primarily of drinking songs

(some of them quite energetic). Our farmers grow barley and turnips, and a

peculiarly nasty green thing that we tell strangers is kale. Our currency is

anything that does not crumble when bitten; our fare is depressingly

Slovakian, and our native dress, in all candor, vaguely suggests Swiss

bell-ringers costumed by gleefully maniacal Turks. However, our folk music,

as I can testify better than most, is entirely indigenous, since no other

people would ever claim it. We are the property of the Austro-Hungarian

Empire, or else we belong to the Ottomans; opinions vary, and no one on

either side seems really to be interested. As I say, I tell you all this so that

you will be under no possible misapprehension concerning our signifi-cance

in this great turbulence of Europe. We have none.

Even my own standing as concertmaster here poses a peculiar but

legitimate question. Traditionally, as elsewhere, an orchestra's first

vio-linist is named concertmaster, and serves the conductor as assistant

and counselor, and, when necessary, as a sort of intermediary between him

and the other musicians. We did have a conductor once, many years ago,

but he left us following a particularly upsetting incident, involving a

policeman and a goat—and the Town Council has never been able since to

locate a suitable replacement. Consequently, for good or ill, I have been

conductor de facto for some dozen years, and our orchestra seems none the

worse for it, on the whole. Granted, we have always lacked the

proper—shall I say crispness ?—to do justice to the Baroque composers, and

we generally know far better than to attempt Beethoven at all; but I will

assert that we perform Liszt, Saint-Saens, and some Mendelssohn quite

passably, not to mention lighter works by assorted Strausses and even

Rossini. And our Gilbert & Sullivan closing medley almost never fails to

provoke a standing ovation, when our audience is sober enough to rise. We

may not be the Vienna Schauspielhaus , but we do our best. We have our

pride.

It was on a spring evening of 1894 that he appeared at my door: the tall,

irritating man we knew as Herr Sigerson, the Norwegian. You tell me now

that he had other names, which I can well believe—I can tell you in turn

that I always suspected he was surely not Norwegian. Norwegians have

manners , if they have no cuisine; no Norwegian I ever knew was remotely

as arrogant, implicitly superior, and generally impossible as this "Sigerson"

person. And no, before you ask, it would be almost impossi-ble for me to

explain exactly what made him so impossible. His voice? His carriage? His

regard, that way of studying one as though one were a canal on Mars, or a

bacterium hitherto unknown to mankind? Whatever the immediate cause, I

disliked him on sight; and should I learn from you today that he was in

reality a prince of your England, this would not change my opinion by a hair.

Strengthen it, in fact, I should think.

Nevertheless. Nevertheless, he was, beyond any debate or cavil, a bet-ter

violinist than I. His tone was richer, his attack at once smoother and yet

more vivid; his phrasing far more adventurous than I would ever have

dared—or could have brought off, had I dared. I can be as jealous, and

even spiteful, as the next man, but I am not a fool. He deserved to sit in

the first violinist's chair—my chair for nineteen years. It was merely justice,

nothing more.

When he first came to my house—as I recall, he was literally just off the

mail coach that sometimes picks up a passenger or two from the weekly

Bucharest train—he asked my name, gave his own, and handed me a letter

of introduction written by a former schoolmate of mine long since gone on

to better things. The letter informed me that the bearer was "a first-rate

musician, well-schooled and knowledgeable, who has elected, for personal

reasons, to seek a situation with a small provincial orchestra, one

preferably located as far off the conventional routes of trade and travel as

possible. Naturally, old friend, I thought of you..."

Naturally. Sigerson—he gave no other name then—watched in silence from

under dark, slightly arched brows as I perused the letter. He was a tall

man, as I have said, appearing to be somewhere in his early forties with a

bold, high-bridged nose—a tenor's nose—in a lean face. I remem-ber clearly

a thin scar, looking to be fairly recent, cutting sharply across his prominent

left cheekbone. The mouth was a near-twin to that scar easily as taut and

pale, and with no more humor that I could see. His eyes were a flat gray,

without any hint of blue, as such eyes most often have, and he had a habit

of closing them and pressing his right and left-hand fingertips against each

other when he was at his most attentive. I found this particularly irksome,

as I did his voice, which was slightly high and slightly strident, to my ear at

least. Another might not have noticed it.

I must be honest and admit to you that if the dislike at our first encoun-ter

was immediate, it was also entirely on my side. I do not imagine thai Herr

Sigerson concerned himself in the least over my good opinion, nor that he

was even momentarily offended by not having it. He accepted the insulting

wage St. Radomir could offer him as indifferently as he accepted my

awe—yes, also admitted—when, by way of audition, he per-formed the

Chevalier St-Georges' horrendously difficult Etude in A Major at my kitchen

table, following it with something appropriately diaboli-cal by Paganini. I

told him that there was an attic room available at the Widow Ridnak's for

next to nothing, upon which he thanked me courte-ously enough and rose

to leave without another word, only turning at the door when I spoke his

name.

"Herr Sigerson? Do you suppose that you might one day reveal to me your

personal reasons for burying your considerable gifts in this particu-lar corner

of nowhere? I ask, not out of vulgar inquisitiveness, but simply as one

musician to another."

He smiled then—I can quite exactly count the times when I ever saw him

do such a thing. It was a very odd entity, that smile of his: not with-out

mirth (there was wit and irony in the man, if not what I would call humor),

but just below the slow amusement of his lips I felt—rather than saw—a

small scornful twist, almost a grimace of contempt. Your Herr Sigerson does

not really like human beings very much, does he? Music, yes.

"Herr Takesti," he replied, graciously enough, "please understand that such

reasons as I may have for my presence here need in no way trou-ble St.

Radomir. I have no mission, no ill purpose—no purpose at all, in fact, but

only a deep desire for tranquility, along with a rather sentimen-tal curiosity

concerning the truest wellsprings of music, which do not lie in Vienna or

Paris, but in just such backwaters and in such under-schooled orchestras as

yours." I was deciding whether to rise indignantly to the defense of my

town, even though his acid estimate was entirely accurate, when he went

on, the smile slightly warmer now, "And, if you will permit me to say so,

while I may have displaced the first violin,"—for I had already so informed

him; why delay the plainly unavoidable? "—the conductor will find me loyal

and conscientious while I remain in St. Radomir." Whereupon he took his

leave, and I stood in my door-way and watched his tall figure casting its

gaunt shadow ahead of him as he made his way down the path to the dirt

road that leads to the Widow Ridnak's farm. He carried a suitcase in one

hand, his violin case in the other, and he was whistling a melody that

sounded like Sarasate. Yes, I believe it was Sarasate.

I had mentioned a rehearsal that night, but neither asked nor expected him

to attend, only a few hours off the train. I cannot even remember tell-ing

him how to find the local beerhall where we have always rehearsed; yet

there he was, indifferently polite as ever, tuning up with the rest of the

strings. I gave a short, awkward speech, introducing our new first violin to

the orchestra (at my prompting, he offered the transparently false Christian

name of Oscar), and adding that, from what I had heard at my kitchen

table, we could only gain from his accession to my former chair. Most of

them were plainly disgruntled by the announcement—a flute and a

trombone even wept briefly—which I found flattering, I must confess. But I

reassured them that I had every intention of continuing as their devoted

guide and leader, and they did seem to take at least some solace from that

pledge. No orchestra is ever one big, happy family, but we were all old

comrades, which is decidedly better for the music. They would quickly adapt

to the changed situation.

In fact, they adapted perhaps a trifle too quickly for my entire comfort.

Within an hour they were exclaiming over Sigerson's tone and his rhyth-mic

sense, praising his dynamics as they never had mine—no, this is not

jealousy, simply a fact—and already beginning to chatter about the

possi-bility of expanding our increasingly stale repertoire, of a single fresh

and innovative voice changing the entire character of the orchestra.

Sigerson was modest under their admiration, even diffident, waving all

applause away; for myself, I spoke not at all, except to bring the rehearsal

back into order when necessary. We dispersed full of visions—anyway, they

did. I recall that a couple of the woodwinds were proposing the Mozart

Violin Concerto, which was at least conceivable; and that same trombone

even left whispering, " Symphonic Fantastique ," which was simply silly. He

had them thinking like that, you see, in one rehearsal, without trying.

And we did make changes. Of course we did. You exploit the talent you

have available, and Sigerson's presence made it possible for me to consider

attempting works a good bit more demanding than the Greater Bornitz

Municipal Orchestra had performed in its entire career. No, I should have

said, "existence." Other orchestras have careers. We are merely happy still

to be here.

Berlioz, no. They cannot play what he wrote in Paris, London, Vienna—how

then in St. Radomir? Beethoven, no, not even with an entire string section

of Sigersons. But Handel ... Haydn ... Mozart ... Telemann ... yes, yes , the

more I thought of it, there was never any real reason why we could not

cope decently with such works; it was never anything but my foolish

anxiety—and, to be fair to myself, our national inferiority complex, if we are

even a nation at all. Who are we, in darkest Selmira, operetta Selmira, joke

Selmira, comically backward Selmira, Selmira the laughingstock of bleakly

backward Eastern Europe—or so we would be, if anyone knew exactly where

we were—to imagine ourselves remotely capable of pro-ducing real music?

Well, by God, we were going to imagine it, and if we made fools of

ourselves in the attempt, what was new in that? At least we would be a

different sort of fools than we had been. St. Radomir, Bornitz, Selmira ...

they would never have seen such fools.

That was the effect he had on us, your Mr. Sigerson, and whatever I think

of him, for that I will always be grateful. True to his word, he made

absolutely no effort to supplant my musical judgment with his own, or to

subvert my leadership in any way. There were certainly those who sought

him out for advice on everything from interpretation to fingering to modern

bowing technique, but for all but the most technical matters he always

referred them back to me. I think that this may have been less an issue of

loyalty than of complete lack of interest in any sort of author-ity or

influence—as I knew the man, that simply was not in him. He seemed

primarily to wish to play music, and to be let alone. And which desire had

priority, I could not have told you, then or now.

Very well. You were asking me about the incident which, in my undoubtedly

perverse humor, I choose to remember as The Matter of the Uxorious

Cellist. Sigerson and I were allies—ill-matched ones, undoubt-edly, but

allies nonetheless—in this unlikely affair, and if we had not been, who's to

say how it might have come out? On the other hand, if we had left it

entirely alone ... well, judge for yourself. Judge for yourself.

The Greater Bornitz Municipal Orchestra has always been weak in the lower

strings, for some reason—it is very nearly a tradition with us. That year we

boasted, remarkably, four cellists, two of them rather wispy young women

who peeped around their instruments with an anxious and diffident air. The

third, however, was a burly Russo-Bulgarian named Volodya Andrichev:

blue-eyed, blue-chinned, wild-haired, the approxi-mate size of a church

door (and I mean an Orthodox church here), pos-sessed of—or by—an

attack that should by rights have set fire to his score. He ate music, if you

understand me; he approached all composi-tion as consumption, from Liszt

and Rossini, at which he was splendid, to Schumann, whom he invariably

left in shreds, no matter how I attempted to minimize his presence, or to

conceal it outright. Nevertheless, I hon-ored his passion and vivacity; and

besides, I liked the man. He had the snuffling, shambling charm of the

black bears that still wander our oak forests as though not entirely sure

what they are doing here, but content enough nonetheless. I quite miss

him, as much time as it's been.

His wife, Lyudmilla Plaschka, had been one of our better woodwinds, but

retired on the day of their wedding, that being considered the only proper

behavior for a married woman in those times. She was of Bohemian

extraction, I believe: a round, blonde little person, distinctly appealing to a

particular taste. I remember her singing (alto) with her church choir, eyes

closed, hands clasped at her breast—a godly picture of innocent rapture.

Yet every now and then, in the middle of a Bach cantata or some Requiem

Mass, I would see those wide blue eyes come open, very briefly, regarding

the tenor section with the slightest pagan glint in their corners. Basses,

too, but especially the tenors. Odd, the detail with which these things

come back to you.

He adored her, that big, clumsy, surly Andrichev, even more than he loved

his superb Fabregas cello, and much in the same manner, since he plainly

felt that both of them were vastly too good for him. Absolute adoration—I

haven't encountered much of that in my life, not the real thing, the heart

never meant for show that can't help showing itself. It was a touching thing

to see, but annoying as well on occasion: during rehearsal, or even

performance, I could always tell when his mind was wandering off home to

his fluffy golden goddess. Played the devil with his vibrato every time, I can

tell you.

To do her justice—very reluctantly—she had the decency, or the plain good

sense, to avoid involvements with any of her husband's col-leagues. As I

have implied, she preferred fellow singers to instrumental-ists anyway; and

Peter S. Beagle - Mr Sigerson.pdf

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