The Maestro Read online

  When his hand was released Antonio Salvatore walked over to me and twisted his face into a tired smile. “You doing okay, Gianni?”

  “Fine, thanks. Like you to meet a friend of mine, Mario Angeletti. Mario, Tony’s the biggest booking agent in Milan.”

  “Wish it was true,” Antonio Salvatore countered. He eased himself into a seat, asked Mario, “You really a friend of his?”

  “I try to be.”

  “Then get him to tell me when he’s coming in and making an album of his own.”

  Alessandro set a steaming plate in front of me, said proudly, “Scampi alla Villa d’Este. Grilled jumbo shrimp with a cream and peppercorn sauce, served on a bed of wild rice and fresh spinach. Buon appetito, Maestro.”

  I nodded my thanks, smelled the steamy perfume, said, “I haven’t worked up any songs I like enough to want to record.”

  Antonio Salvatore looked at Mario, his face wearing its habitually pained expression. “Did you hear me say anything about songs? Has this old brain started spouting off without my hearing what I’m saying?”

  Alessandro watched until I took the first bite and smiled my approval. “There’s still some of that Gavi di Gavi left in the fridge. You want a glass, Maestro?”

  “Great, Alessandro. Thanks.”

  Antonio Salvatore went on to Mario, “I got songwriters coming outta my ears. You know what they’d give to do songs for Giovanni di Alta’s first album? I tell you what they’d give. Their mommas, their younger sisters, and rights to their first children. You ever heard this guy sing? I won’t even ask you about how he plays. I’m talking about his voice.”

  “I’ve heard,” Mario said mildly.

  “So what’s this guy doing spending his life in a Como nightclub? You mind telling me that? You think maybe he’s decided it’s his life’s mission to keep me poor?”

  “You’re a lot of things, Tony,” I said, talking around a bite of scrunchy-soft shrimp. “But poor isn’t one of them.”

  Antonio passed a wrinkled hand over the thin strands of hair that barely covered his crown. “I gotta stop this. It makes me too upset. My doctor warned me about that. Said every time I made myself upset I take two years off my life. Shoulda warned me to stay outta Como.”

  “Don’t get yourself worked up, Tony,” I said, winking at Mario. It was an old story between us, this album.

  Antonio Salvatore sighed his defeat, reached for an inner pocket, pulled out the inevitable papers. “Giorgio Coppa’s starting his first takes next month. Wants you to work with him on three, maybe four songs.”

  Mario stood, slid a cassette across the table toward me, said, “You get a minute, Gianni, take a listen to this.”

  I picked it up, said, “I don’t know, Mario, it’s just not—”

  “I recorded it during a session a couple of weeks ago,” Mario said, riding over my words. “Lifted the vocals out, so you’ve got just the instruments.”

  Antonio Salvatore’s watered-down eyes showed a flicker of interest. He said to Mario, “You play with a group?”

  “Mario is sound engineer to a group in Germany,” I explained.

  “Germany, Holland, Belgium, Great Britain, Switzerland,” Mario corrected. “You really oughtta check this out, Maestro.”

  “Yeah?” Antonio Salvatore focused on Mario as though seeing him for the first time. “This a German group?”

  “Pretty international,” I said, keeping my eyes on Mario. “Three Germans, a Swiss, a Brazilian, an Egyptian, and two Americans—did I get that right?”

  “Two Germans,” Mario corrected.

  “Yeah, I forgot. Your guitarist has a new job lined up in the States, doesn’t he.” It was not a question. Ever since he had told the group of his plans they had been pressing me to join. It surprised me; Mario above all others should know that the thought of returning to Germany left me cold. I dropped my eyes to my plate, shook my head. Whatever else Jake was, he had to be crazy.

  “The Italian market’s hot for foreign bands right now,” Antonio Salvatore told Mario. “You guys contracted with anybody?”

  Mario ignored him, said to me, “It’s just three songs, Gianni. There oughtta be room sometime in the night for three songs.”

  I picked up the cassette, asked, “Who’re they by, these songs?”

  “Nobody you ever heard of, that’s why I did the cassette.” Mario turned for the door, said over his shoulder, “You really oughtta check them out, Maestro. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”

  ****

  I carried a half bottle of wine with me back to the dressing room. Gavi di Gavi was one of my favorites, full-bodied and dry, the kind of wine I could drink slow and steady all night and not feel that dull-eyed sinking state at the end. This was very important if I expected to repeat the process the next night. And the night after that. And again Monday and Tuesday if I was doing studio sessions. It was important to know what would keep me up, and not come crashing down on my head too hard the next morning.

  A hunger clenched my gut by the time I closed my dressing room door, and it wasn’t for food. I practiced a sort of abstinence on Wednesdays, the day I visited my grandmother’s church. Then on Thursdays I would not do anything until it was time to play. I never did. Holding off unless I was playing meant that I didn’t touch anything from Sunday night until Thursday evening if I wasn’t doing studio work that week. This was one of those weeks. It was tough making the distance, but it left me feeling as if I was in control. I could handle it. I wasn’t in trouble so long as I could wait for either a session or the stage. And the hunger I felt after a four-day wait was a high almost as strong as what was to come.

  Before I could unlock the cabinet, a knock sounded on my door. I opened it to admit Bruno, my drummer. He was originally from Torre Del Greco, a squalid little village between Naples and Pompei, best known for its export of coral carvings and able-bodied men. Bruno called his move to Milan the great escape, and maintained a sense of style patterned after the women of his village. Everything he wore was black—black boots, black trousers and shirt and string bow tie and suede vest and slouch hat and velvet ribbon to tie back his black hair. Black eyes were hidden behind black sunglasses on stage, and his drum-gloves were skin-tight black leather. In the world of modern music, Bruno was considered a conservative dresser.

  He slipped a soft leather pouch from his pocket and tossed it to me. I released the drawstring and gingerly let a thumb-size ball slide into my hand. The stuff was crumbly-soft and blond, almost white. I whistled softly at the sight.

  “Lebanese,” Bruno said, taking a sip from my wine. “Luca brought it in from Amsterdam last night.”

  “He got any more?” I broke a little into my palm and put it into the glass water pipe I extracted from my cabinet.

  “I’ll have to ask.” From long habit Bruno lit the scented candle and swung the window shut.

  Carefully I uncorked the pipe, made to order by a glass-blowing friend, and poured in some of the chilled wine. My throat was very sensitive, and wine or grappa helped to lessen the smoke’s sting.

  I refitted the top, held a match to the bowl, and drew softly. Bruno seated himself across from me and began playing rhythmic combinations in the air. When the pipe’s bulb-shaped base was filled with swirling smoke, I released my finger from the opening and drew it deep inside my lungs. I took another hit, then passed the pipe to Bruno. We seldom spoke in these first moments. There was little that could compare with the pleasure of that first rush, especially after a few days of doing without.

  I first met Bruno a couple of years ago while working in a Turin studio for a singer who wanted to apply a jazz beat to a contemporary pop song. There weren’t many studio musicians in Italy with the talent and flexibility to meld one range of sound—rhythm and blues, rock, funk, contemporary pop, Latin salsa—with another. Bruno was a last-ditch effort brought in by a Milanese agent, a guy who was known throughout the industry as an expert at promising the moon. The surprise was, Bruno delivered. He
had all the poses that were so typical of Italian musicians, the hard-set face and the stone-cold eyes and the dead-panned speech, but he played with brilliance.

  The professional music industry in Italy was as small and closed as anywhere else. Word swiftly got around, and we discovered that playing together as a unit offered us an edge. A keyboard player, Claudio, soon joined us. The weekend sessions at the Como nightclub seemed a natural addition to our work.

  A couple more tokes and the pipe was set aside. I took out the cassette and reached for the portable player I used for recording sessions and song ideas.

  “What you got, Gianni?”

  “Something Mario gave me.”

  Bruno snorted. He kept his opinions about Mario to himself. He knew Mario was my friend.

  “Their lead singer’s out front tonight. He asked if I’d check out their music, maybe give her a chance to sing with us.”

  I pushed the play button and settled back. The room filled with sound. I glanced over, saw Bruno’s eyebrows lift slightly. I agreed. The music was very tight, very good. Even without the vocals, the band sounded solid.

  The song ended and the next began. Like the first, it had a fairly standard sort of pattern, probably chosen because it would be easy to learn. Yet the two songs were as different in beat and perspective as two songs could be and still be called contemporary. Bruno’s eyebrows crawled up another notch.

  The third song was as powerful as the first two, and just as different. Most groups playing contemporary music had the ability to play well only within a very limited range of musical form. This group clearly had the talent to switch from one point on the musical spectrum to something entirely different, and do so with fluid professionalism. The songs represented three points of a triangle, as distant from each other as they could possibly be. If their lead singer Amy could sing as well as her band played, it would show an amazing range of voice and control.

  “That Mario’s group playing?” Bruno finally asked.

  I nodded. “This Amy must be pretty good.”

  “That’s their singer’s name? Amy?” Bruno shook his head. “Either she’s something else or ‘una pazza totale.’ ” A total whacko.

  We played the tape several more times, with me fingering chords and Bruno drumming silent tempo and time changes. In a recording studio time was money; speed in learning new parts was essential. When a studio musician was brought in for overdubbing he was under constant pressure to learn his part swiftly and play it correctly. I went over the songs until the chords were memorized and the playing smooth, then went back and tried a few runs for the solos. I watched Bruno’s face for reaction, stopping here and there to discuss timing and emphasis. My first impression solidified. This music was very strong.

  Alessandro knocked on the door; Bruno got up to let him in. I re-lit the pipe, took a deep drag, passed it over. Alessandro drew the smoke in and expanded visibly. He blew out for what seemed to be forever, said, “Time to go, Maestro.”

  “We’ve got a guest singer for the late-night set,” I told him.

  “If she’s as good as her band she’s gonna bring the house down,” Bruno predicted.

  Alessandro split his beard with an enormous grin. “Great, just great. Nothing like the special guest to pack ’em in.”

  “We’ve never heard her sing,” Bruno warned. “Right, Gianni?”

  “A total unknown,” I agreed.

  Alessandro shrugged one massive shoulder. “If the Maestro wants her on, she’s gotta be hot as they come.”

  I stopped in front of the full-length mirror, checked out my reflection. My jet-black hair fell in the same loose curls I’d had since I was a baby, only now they spilled over my shoulders and down my back. I wore what I did most nights—tight silver-gray gabardine pants, soft-leather black boots, and a white-on-white silk shirt. The cuffs had two rings of light elastic sewn in, so that I could push them up and out of my way if we started on some heavy runs. The shirt was cut like a flamenco dancer’s, with voluminous sleeves and a long triangular flap over the chest that had to be tied shut with a little silk cable. I usually left the flap open. A girl once told me that when I was moving around the stage under the lights, I looked as if I were wearing a rainbow on my upper body. The frame of my haircut made my eyes look enormous, just like my hairdresser said it would. The slight glaze from the smoke was invisible under the stage lights. That I knew from experience.

  I turned back to the room and smiled at my two friends. “Showtime.”

  There was a smattering of applause when I walked up on stage and sat down on the simple lonely stool. I didn’t have an announcer because I didn’t want one. It was a challenge I never tired of, entering into a cold room—although it wasn’t so cold anymore. More and more the audiences on the nights when I played here were regulars, booking the next free night before they departed.

  The guests at tables farther away continued to talk, some more loudly than others. I didn’t mind. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Mario at one of the stageside tables, seated beside a truly beautiful lady and one of the biggest men I had ever seen. I resisted the urge to look up. It would have violated the shield, the distance the smoke’s high placed between me and the rest of the world.

  I picked up my Chet Atkins acoustic, adjusted the footstool, took a breath, and began.

  Tonight’s introduction was the first movement of a classical piece, one which almost cost me my sanity when I first learned it. At the time I was studying under a very severe guitar teacher in Germany, and he stripped this graceful piece of all its melodious fluidity and forced me to play as though the notes were intended to march off the page. This evening I held myself to his rigidity, accepting the repeated challenge from a man whom I had not seen nor heard from in over ten years. I played it precisely as he would have wanted it, but it was not enough. It never was. Being forced by this teacher to concentrate on discipline above all else had transformed classical music from the most important thing in my life into a launching pad.

  Not allowing time for applause, I swung into a second song, a sort of bridge. From the careful fingering and severe timing I used on the classical movement, I loosened into an exaggerated scale exercise, sliding up and down the neck of the guitar, switching from minor to seventh to discord, creating a transition from disciplined classical to free-flowing interpretation. I did not stay with it long. It threatened to bring up memories of another time, when I would start on this little moment of wing-stretching and hear a voice sing to me from within. I had not heard that inner voice or followed its song since the day my grandmother died.

  With a flick of my toe I turned on the rhythm machine, smoothly swinging up the volume with a special foot control and allowing the bridge exercise to melt into the beat. It was a slow-to-moderate samba. I decided on a song that almost all the Italians there would know, “Il Nastro Rosa” by Lucio Battisti, and gradually moved away from the bridge. I was five bars into the song when applause from the front tables signaled that people recognized what I was playing.

  Mario and company were honored with the best table in the house. Mario knew Alessandro well, had helped us set up the club’s sound system when we opened for the weekend late-night shows. Like many others Alessandro found Mario a great guy who unfortunately was a little crazy over religion. That the religion was called Christianity meant less than nothing to Alessandro. To his mind the fervor with which Mario approached faith pushed Christianity out into the fringes where all the other way-out sects resided. Mario read the message in Alessandro’s eyes and smiled that gentle smile, his light never dimming.

  I felt my attention drawn to his table. Well-known musicians were often guests at the club, and they were normally very easy to keep out of my protected zone. I could hold their jealousy and their desire to steal and use and manipulate and belittle at a safe distance. But from Mario and his friends I felt no threat. The enormous smile the beautiful woman wore, the brilliant look in Mario’s eyes that I caught sight of from t
ime to time seemed to urge me on. I took it as a challenge and played as I rarely did.

  After the set, I found the keyboard player already in my room, busy with his little mirror. Claudio looked up from where he was carefully chopping the white powder with his bone-handled knife. “Mario’s band sounds hot, Maestro.”

  Bruno lit the pipe, handed it over. I took a long hit before replying, “He’s out in the front row with the singer, Amy.”

  “I saw her,” Bruno said, taking back the pipe. “Spectacular.”

  “That’s some giant of a man beside her,” Claudio said. From the same kangaroo-skin pouch that held his mirror and knife and stash, he took out a thin silver tube. With practiced ease he drew a line into each nostril. He raised his head, eyes half-closed, and sniffed in very hard. With a finger he traced over the mirror’s surface, then licked off the residue.

  He held out the tube. “You want a taste, Gianni?”

  “Not tonight, Claudio.” I usually held myself to smoke these days. That and wine and grappa. Sometimes I’d do a little coke on Tuesdays, if the week had been a weary one and I needed an extra lift for the last few studio takes. Cocaine didn’t agree with me, or rather, it agreed with me too much. The desire for marijuana or hashish or keef was nothing like what I felt after doing a couple of lines. The white powder was a spiral without an end, a drug that promised too much. I was afraid if I started on cocaine seriously, before too long the stuff would own me.

  “You were hot out there tonight, Maestro,” Bruno said.

  “Yeah, caught the last part of your set. Sounded good, Gianni. Really good.”

  I toasted them with the pipe, took a final drag, said with the smoke, “Why don’t we go over the girl’s songs?”

  We went through the music a number of times, anticipating a fifteen-minute session with the beautiful mystery woman. I fingered scattered patches on my classical guitar, the one my grandmother had given me for my fourteenth birthday. I seldom played the classical on stage because the required microhone and amplification would pick up too much background noise. But I loved this instrument and the intimacy it imparted. Claudio played complex chordings on his portable Yamaha keyboard, and Bruno kept time on the edge of the table. Claudio stopped us more often than was necessary, asking questions that really weren’t important so he could snort a few more lines. Bruno accepted his invitations cheerfully, and soon both were sniffing and smiling at the shared joke of another high.