Harmony (4 page)

He hovered before the display model of Micah’s design for
A Dream of Red Mansions
, a multi-award-winner waiting to be shipped to a museum in the Beijing Dome. The glass housing was dark, and Howie’s hand that could never leave well enough alone strayed to the keypad set into the base, selecting act and scene. The box came to life at the top of Two, four, with the portentous music of the entr’acte and holographic mists sifting down from midnight hills to coil around curly pines and painted pagodas lit by the glow of dragon-headed lanterns. I sighed. I loved that design, envied its darkness and mystery and the completeness of its conception. The downside was it made me despair of ever being able to come close to it in my own work.

“I flew to Glyndebourne for the evening just to see this,” Howie murmured. He watched until the entrance of the tenor, saw he was losing us to the model’s evolving magic, and switched it off in the middle of a crescendo. “Sublime, but exactly what my piece isn’t gonna want. None of your usual spectacle.”

Usual?
Well, I thought Howie must be pretty desperate if he was willing to needle his old friend into saying yes.

But Micah always said anger took years off his life. In three years I’d only once seen him lose control, at a producer, and then it took two burly stagehands to hold him back. Now he rinsed his brush again and set it deliberately aside. “Songh, make coffee, would you please?”

I waited for Howie to be treated to one of Micah’s intimidatingly articulate defenses of The Work, coupled with a lecture on the value of his time. But that was when clever Howie chose to tell us about the Eye.

He followed Micah to the narrow trestle table beneath the courtyard windows. Every other surface in the studio was crammed with tools and supplies, stray model pieces and research. These dark planks were kept clean and oiled, to show off a single vase of flowers from the courtyard. Order within Chaos. This week, Order was red gladiolus.

Howie waited, hulking in the filtered sunlight like some smartly dressed grizzly, until Micah settled fussily into his wooden armchair. He perched opposite. “There’s this troupe, actor-dancers—”

“From?” Micah’s chin folded into his chest.

“They’re a touring company. They don’t have a permanent space.”

“I didn’t mean what theatre, I meant what dome?”

“No dome, actually.”

Micah glanced up, I thought, hopefully.

“No, they’re not Outsiders.”

Micah’s mouth quirked. “Not ready to be that radical.”

“The next best thing. They’re from Tuatua.”

Jane gasped. Crispin cheered and slapped the off switch on his holo. Songh’s painstaking coffee making halted, his round moon face lit in joyous disbelief. Even Micah nodded with faintly raised brows. Howie leaned back to enjoy his carefully orchestrated sensation, and then I ruined everything.

“From where?”

Crispin made a face I wished I could hate him for.

“Tuatua!” Songh was innocent of malice. “You know, the Magic Island! Everyone’s heard of it!”

Not me, from benighted Chicago, not even three busy, informative years later.

“It’s a tiny island in the Pacific,” Micah supplied gently. “Hasn’t been much in the news once the initial furor died down.”

“The Island That Time Passed By!” Songh waved empty coffee mugs in circles above his head. He was small but lithe and graceful as a dancer. My mental image of Songh was always smoothness.

“It really exists?” Jane murmured, as if she wished it didn’t.

Micah nodded. “The only known community in the world to survive the Dissolution without doming. Quite the mystery, actually.”

“Tuatual” Howie beamed. “The very stuff of legend.”

“Without doming? And they’re all right?” I asked.

“Yup. Drives those science types crazy.”

“Unique geographical isolation,” Micah explained, “and that it stayed undiscovered for so long after the collapse.”

“No, it was their magic powers,” Songh insisted, arranging the mugs in a precise oblong on the tray.

The word
power
keyed a memory. I had heard of Tuatua before, or something like it.

Crispin ambled over, tightening the red bandanna that wrapped his glorious shoulder-length hair. “Stayed undiscovered until fifteen years ago, when some enterprising Tuatuan saw the profit to be made in fresh foodstuffs, packed up a war canoe with papaya and bananas, and sailed two weeks to the nearest neighbor to set up a fruit stand.”

“Instant fame,” nodded Howie. “Relative prosperity.”

“And tourism,” Micah added. “For those with dangerous tastes.”

“And touring companies!” Howie gloated. “Or one at least.”

Micah was wary. “Not another ethnic traditionalist dance company?”

“Hey! Would I do that to you?”

Micah shrugged delicately.

“Naw, they’ve done a lot of dance and folk drama, but they have this play they want to add to their repertory, expand their horizons a little. Reede Chamberlaine saw them in Kyoto and came to me with the idea of starting the new piece here. They call themselves the Eye.”

“The Eye?” repeated Crispin. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Howie smiled. “Guess we’ll find out.”

Songh brought the coffee, balancing the laden tray as if his job depended on it, which in Micah’s studio it did not. I tried to picture this undomed yet living island. I was glad it was unique. That it could exist at all raised too many disturbing questions.

Howie leaned into the table to wrap his big hands around a steaming mug as tenderly as a lover. His nails were clean and professionally buffed but bitten to the quick. “The very name Tuatua will be a big draw, but I got to tell you, this is no booking agent’s idea of an easy sell—these guys are on the very brink of civilization, schizoid mystics deep into the magic and legend and taboos of yesterday, yet struggling to embrace the cold logic of today.”

“Ah,” remarked Micah, always at his driest when weighing a decision. “A preview of an upcoming press release?”

“Press, schmess! Micah, I’m talking a revolution in style here!” Howie rose, the famous Marr energy brimming like water at a spillway. “Away with your holograms and lasers! The power of the Eye will be the power of the live actor alone. Voice, movement, the transcendence of the word!” He threw out his arms like Moses receiving the inspiration of God. His sleeve toppled Jane’s lamp, and her lunge after it scattered scale rule, pencils, and eraser to four points of the compass.

Micah hugged his coffee mug protectively. “Down, Howard, down.”

“The time is right for it, Mi! A return to elegant simplicity! A new look! The history books will credit you.” Howie bent to join Jane in pursuit of the lost implements.

Jane crabbed sideways and stood, beet-red, clutching her tools to her thin chest. She hated being involved in clumsiness, in case it might be held against her. “It’s all right, Mr. Marr. I have them.”

Howie clambered to his feet. “Gad, so early in the morning and already I’m exhausted.” He dusted his expensive slacks, pulled their creases into the best order possible on his pudgy thighs. “Tell me, you guys believe in omens?”

“Oh yes,” chirped Songh. Crispin snorted.

“Not so fast, now.” Howie fished a yellowed tatter out of a silver card case and held it up between two fingers. “Newspaper, the real thing. A genuine scrap of history. I found it stuck inside a pre-Dissolution atlas I picked up years ago. Added it to my idea file. Thought it might make a play someday.”

Micah took the clipping and scanned it while Howie fidgeted.

“You see it? The remote island? The native tribesmen with their strange religion? Micah, it could be
them!
I’ve had that clipping for ten years. It’s like I knew!” When Micah’s only response was to regard him dubiously, Howie made a sound like a balloon deflating. Hype might be his stock in trade, but it required effort nonetheless. “Christ, Mi, how long you gonna make me go on like this? Does it make any difference I’m gonna direct this one myself? Please. I’d like you there to see me through it. Like old times.”

I was amazed that Micah didn’t say, forget it, I’m too busy. Instead, he offered up the clipping on his palm. “Have you seen this troupe perform?”

Howie folded the shred away reverently. “I’ve read a few reviews. Reede’s booking them worldwide after they leave here. Damn, does it matter? It’s the idea of the thing, isn’t it? It’s artistic freedom! It’s… Tuatua!”

Micah studied his mug intently. “What are your dates?”

“Goes into rehearsal in July.”

“July what?”

“Fifteenth, by the current schedule. It might be tricky getting them visas and the like, them being unEnclosed and all.”

“Howard, please. July of what
year
?”

Here, to his credit, Howie did show a fleeting embarrassment. “This July, Micah. Two months from now.”

I couldn’t believe the audacity.

Crispin was brave enough to be vocal about it. “You want an update, boss?” He jabbed at his keypad as if urging it to audible protest. “Bids for Marin are due end of this month, engineering specs for
Deo Gratias
by June tenth, drawings and model for
Cymbeline
before the first of July.”

To save Crispin from being the only murdered messenger, I added, “And you did agree to have roughs for Willow Street’s new piece by the end of June. Plus there’s
Don Pasquale
for Sydney Opera to begin thinking about.”

Micah nodded and nodded, staring at Howie, who somehow found the temerity to stare back.

“Remember, it doesn’t want much,” Howie prodded gently. “An image, an idea. We’ll do it in our smaller theatre. Nothing much to build. It’ll mostly be think-time for you, the part you really enjoy. Give me twenty minutes to lay it out for you. You don’t buy, then God’s honor, you won’t hear another word about it.”

Micah nodded a bit more, muttered, “Tuatua…” then plunked down his mug, and rose like a sudden flight of birds, winging for the conference room. He paused at the door, caught in his own momentary disbelief, then glanced at the old analogue wall clock that was our only timepiece. “All right, Howard, you’ve got your twenty minutes. See if you can convince me.”

HOWIE’S RESEARCH: THE CLIPPING IN THE ATLAS

“… stayed in the car, but my husband and I did not regret the steep and sweaty climb to the top of the promontory. There were flowers everywhere, as lush as if tended by human hand. The view of the island was unsurpassed: a bright green ring set in a mirror of blue. On a flat stone table near the summit, a native woman dressed all in blue feathers intoned a singsong ritual before a gathering of her tribe.

When pressed, our native guide translated a bit that the woman had repeated several times, and it went like this:

I said to our guide that this must refer to God, being the Father, but he replied, no, this was not God, or even a god, but an ancestor.

“The rock is her ancestor?” I asked.

“And yours,” he answered impudently. “She knows not to waste her time praying to gods who can’t answer.”

I did wonder then what the Mission had been doing in this lost land with our donations, if not bringing God to the tribesmen.

“If there is no God,” I asked, “then who created us?”

“We have always been here, changing and growing. Is that not the business of life?”

So I answered him as I must: “The business of life is carrying out the work of God.”

I thought it very quaint to be standing on a jungle promontory, discussing religion with a heathen savage as if we were two Church elders, but should anything I said urge him closer to godliness, I would not begrudge the time spent, for truly these are godless folk…”

MICAH:

You might want to know a bit more about Micah, even if you’ve heard most of it already. There’s always some little bit of relevant detail that doesn’t make it into the history files.

Micah had just turned forty-six when I arrived in Harmony. He was strong-faced and chunky, not the romantic Spaniard his surname had suggested, but with a touch of Quixote nonetheless in his droopy, dark mustache and in his willingness to go up against anyone and anything he considered Philistine.

Three years later, I was twenty-two and Micah’s mustache had remained preternaturally black while the rest of his bristly mane was increasingly shot with silver. The Old Badger, Crispin called him in the privacy of our bed, insisting he meant it fondly. For once, I believed him. Not only was it the perfect physical image, but nothing better expressed the deep-rooted, earthy quality of Micah’s determination.

Sometimes, as the years progressed, the wine was uncorked a little earlier in his workday, or the music turned up a little louder, as if to drown out the noise of the constant demand on his time and concentration, or the perennial offenses against his sense of what was just and logical. But he persevered, while others of his colleagues threw up their hands in disgust and retired on their laurels and healthy investment incomes. Even on a day off, if I went into the studio for a forgotten book or sweater, there’d be music filling the tiny room and Micah hard at work, pausing perhaps to conduct a passage with the shaft of his brush, reveling in his rare solitude and the beauty of Mozart.

A relevant fact: Micah wasn’t born in Harmony, either, though he came a lot closer to it than I did. He comes from Buenos Aires, a rich man’s son like Crispin, but from a long and illustrious line of them. He could have inherited servants and an estate large enough to warrant its own dome. He could have worked a short day and taken vacations. But he came to Harmony to escape a life of business and to study music, the violin. It’s said he showed real promise as a composer.

I’d like to have been at the performance of
Die Zauberflote
that changed his mind. He says it was not so much the actual production as what it suggested to him in the way of possibilities for a totality of expression that he had been struggling toward within his music. He left the Conservatory the next day (he says), and apprenticed himself to Andres Bohr, a master scenographer well into making a revolution in theatrical production styles.