by Paul Klemperer

In preparation for an important upcoming show, Franz practiced his trumpet for many hours each day. Toward the end of the week, he heard melodies in his head continuously and when he closed his eyes the notes from the sheet music danced across the screen of his eyelids. Also, his dreams became quite musical. Some of them involved anxiety of course, this being a natural prelude to such a well-publicized concert.

In one nightmarish vignette, he was being harangued by the bandleader (an overbearing enough ogre in daily life, let alone in our poor protagonist's dreamworld). Franz realized he was playing badly, then saw that it was the result of enormous mittens on his hands. He pulled them off but instantly they reappeared. Flustered, he tried to keep performing but his trumpet was drowned out by the hoots and jeers of the audience, which was comprised mostly of desirable young women.

Many of the dreams, however, were simply fantastical. For example, the senses became interchangeable, so that the sounds of various instruments registered as smells. Stringed instruments such as the violins had the aroma of freshly cooked vermicelli with pork, whereas from the lower voiced brass (trombones, tubas and French horns) wafted the pungent fragrance of a fondue heavy with Gruyere, white wine and kirschwasser. In his dreamstate Franz had the ability to create various scents with his trumpet: the heady sharpness of a cognac, the soothing thickness of a capuccino, whatever he chose.

The night before the big show his dreams were the most vivid by far. At first the sounds from the instruments flowed out and upward in the form of bright colors, almost as if he were watching a Disney cartoon. But then as the mysterious experience progressed, the music regained its sonic texture, reaching into Franz's brain and soul, so that he heard the phrases as cogent expressions of thought. More direct than mere words, more comprehensible, more compelling. It was both wonderful and frightening, for he could see directly into the souls of his fellow musicians, share their deepest feelings, both humane and demonic.

From such a dream one might expect our hero to awaken with a start, but this was not the case. His eyes opened slowly, drinking in the early morning light of a sunny spring day. His flesh was intensely aware of the nurturing warmth of the sheets and blanket surrounding him (merely his own reflected body energy, and yet it seemed like the tenderest gift of Mother Nature!), and his heart was filled with happiness. It seemed the most natural thing to sing a song of thanks for such an auspicious day and Franz proceeded to do so. But, curiously, no words came to him, only a pure melody, which flowed from his mouth fully formed, the intent of his soul giving shape and cohesion to a series of luscious musical phrases which, though he found them resoundingly pleasing, were like none he had played or even heard before.

Shrugging this off as the lingering effects of sleep, Franz proceeded to shower and dress himself. It was only after he left his small apartment, strolled the few blocks to the inexpensive cafe where he habitually had his morning coffee and bagel, and seated himself at the counter that the full import of his condition began to make itself known. With a jolt Franz realized that the normal burbling of his fellow patrons' morning conversation was nothing of the sort. Rather it was the oddest assortment of musical sounds, as if gorillas had learned to sing like birds. It had seemed so natural that at first he hadn't even noticed! He stared around himself, transfixed.

Our hero was brought back to reality by the impatient figure of the waitress behind the counter. She was tapping a pen on her check pad, obviously awaiting his order. She spoke again, or rather sang to him again, a short inquisitive motif, ending with an arpeggiated major triad in first inversion. Franz's first reaction was terror. Surely I am going mad, he thought. His heart raced briefly and sweat broke out on the palms of his hands. But then reason asserted its mastery. She was only a waitress after all, not an executioner. Franz in fact recognized her as someone who had taken his breakfast orders several times before.

Bearing this in mind, he opened his mouth and sang. She registered no astonishment, but merely nodded and proceeded to bring him a cup of coffee. Franz realized that he had in fact been thinking of coffee. Perhaps he was not going crazy after all. The fact that she had understood him in some basic fashion gave him comfort. He was not as totally isolated in his newly found condition as his first anxious discovery had led him to believe.

The coffee was good and he sipped it, thinking, Well, what now? Of course he was merely keeping the fear of chaos at bay by the repetition of familiar habits. He took up a discarded newspaper, thinking that at least he could still read words if not hear them, but the mass of print was gibberish. Evidently in this new reality (for him at least) words did not, as one might reasonably expect, translate into musical notation.

Next Franz concentrated on the singsong of the people around him. It was different than overhearing conversation, more difficult, but not completely without logic. It was, he decided, a matter of hearing feelings and intent rather than linear, discursive information. The large man singing to his smaller tablemate, for example, was shaping a song both sympathetic and patronizing, with a tinge of wistfulness. He sang to the smaller man as his father had sung to him, or so it seemed to Franz from his position as a third party audience. Curious. This would obviously take some getting used to. It was a bit uncomfortable to be witness to such direct expressions of deep-seated and complicated emotions, and to be unable to distance oneself from them. Words had provided something of a buffer, he now realized. One could choose a proximity of intimacy through one's words. But that ability was lost to him now.

Having no sense of how to express monetary sums through melody, Franz threw some bills on the counter, more than enough to pay for his coffee, and retreated to his apartment. There, another rude surprise awaited him. His trumpet, it seemed, had become a stranger to him. The sounds which resulted from his exertions hardly resembled the music he was used to making on this instrument. The horn had become like an old lover that one meets accidently on the street. It felt cold and awkward in his hands. He could not hope merely to grasp and play the thing, but had to coax each tentative sound from the mysteries of its tubes and bell. It was not impossible, but it was frighteningly new.

He screamed a brief song of bitter frustration. How has this happened to me? And with the concert this very evening! He wanted to cry out to some omnipotent fatherly being. But there was only the sound of his own plaintive song, like a domesticated animal lost in the wilderness. He stopped and sat in the sudden heavy silence. The trumpet hung from his hands, dangling between his knees, like a detached and useless piece of a much larger machine.

Then he heard a soft, strange music, unlike anything he could have imagined or even recognized. It was reedy like an oboe, but fluid like the most graciously played flute. It seemed to pause on distinct notes of some highly esoteric scale, and then move on, reaching unforeseen heights and startling depths. Captivated, Franz forgot his earthly woes. Gradually the music, which had seemed to come from all around him, became more localized. Perhaps it was his growing sensitivity to this new sensory realm which now allowed him to feel the music as a physical presence in space.

The melody danced near his head, behind him, now over his left shoulder. Franz turned and saw the brief dark movement of an ordinary housefly. So this was the diva serenading him! What a fool he had been, wallowing in the regrets of a life lived yesterday. He lifted the horn to his lips and let the sound come, ugly and moist as a newborn child.