Fear itself

5

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Six Suites for Cello Solo has long been considered a benchmark for cellists. Pablo Casals, who at age thirteen stumbled upon the suites in a secondhand sheet-music store near the harbor in Barcelona, practiced them every day for twelve years before he worked up the courage to play one in public, and it would be another thirty-five years before he felt ready to record the entire series.

Since then, every world-class cellist has had his or her go at the suites, but only the most gifted, the Jacquelines and the Yo-Yos, have even wrestled them to a draw, so it was probably an act of hubris for a twelfth-chair cellist like Wayne Summers to attempt them.

But Wayne, born poor and black in San Francisco’s Fillmore District, had come late to his instrument, and as his teacher Mr. Brotsky always said, without at least a little chutzpah, a man never knows how good he can be or how far he can go.

Which was why every day for the past six years, whether he was working a day job, rehearsing with the symphony, or playing chamber music-or all three, as sometimes happened-Wayne made time to practice at least one of the dances from one of the suites. His favorite was the sarabande from the first suite-there was something so damn sweet and hopeful about it.

That, then, was the piece Wayne, lying in the darkness with his hands cuffed behind his back, chose to practice first, in order to keep himself from going mad. To begin with, he ran through the sarabande in his mind, his left hand twitching the fingering behind him, the muscles of his bowing arm tensing and relaxing rhythmically. Midway through, he began diddle-dumming along, which started the caged birds chirring and singing again. Not the owl though-the owl remained silent.

When he finished, Wayne heard polite applause-the sound of one man clapping, somewhere across the room. But the Bach had worked its magic on Wayne: his mind felt clearer than it had since he’d first awakened, however many hours ago.

“Who are you?” he asked into the darkness. “Why are you doing this?”

No answer-even the birds were silent. But the man was drawing nearer; Wayne could smell him now. He smelled like bubble bath. Cheap, strawberry-scented bubble bath.

“Are you going to kill me?” Wayne asked. It felt strange to be so calm at such a time.

“No.” The voice was only inches away.

Thank you, Jesus. “What, then?”

“I’m going to let our feathered friends here do it for me-eventually.”

On the surface, Wayne remained calm, perhaps because beneath the surface something had already died-hope, most likely-leaving him nothing to do but ask the question again: “Why are you doing this?”

Instead of an answer, a rank smell, then the unpleasant sensation of something cold and clammy being rubbed against his eyelids. It was all so bizarre and incongruous that it took Wayne a few seconds to recognize the odor, and a few more seconds for him to put it all together. Liver-the crazy fuck had just rubbed raw liver into his eyes.

And even then the significance of what had happened failed to dawn on Wayne until he heard a sound that drove every other thought, every other sensation but pure blind panic from his mind and consciousness: the rattle of the chain that tethered the barn owl to its perch.

A moment later came the buffeting of silent wings, and the strike. The first blow drove Wayne’s head back violently against the mattress. The pain was indescribable-Wayne rolled over onto his stomach and began thrashing his head from side to side to protect his eyes. The owl, starved and frustrated, half hopped, half flew from one side to the other, stabbing with its beak, trying to get at the liver smell, the blood smell.

Then it found the ear it had struck accidentally earlier, and contented itself with tearing at that until the man who had brought it to this place hauled it away from its prey and dropped a burlap sack over its head.

“Who are you?” screamed Wayne again, through the pain.

“I’ll give you a hint,” came the answer. “You know how people are always saying you have nothing to fear but fear itself? Well, that’s me, buddy-I’m fear itself.”