Look at the Birdie (13 page)

“What
is
this card anyway?” said Helmholtz.

“It’s from when you were a student,” said Selma.

Helmholtz frowned at the card. He remembered fondly the sober, little, fat boy he’d been, and it offended him to see that boy reduced to numbers. “I give you my word of honor, Selma,” he said, “I was no genius then, and I am not a genius now. Why on earth did you look me up?”

“You’re a teacher of Big Floyd’s,” said Selma. At the mention of Big Floyd, she gained an inch in stature and became radiantly possessive. “I knew you’d gone to school here, so I looked you up,” she said, “to see if you were smart enough to realize how really smart Big Floyd is.”

Helmholtz cocked his head quizzically. “And just how smart do you think Big Floyd is?” said Helmholtz.

“Look him up, if you want to,” said Selma. She was becoming self-righteous now. “I guess nobody ever bothered to look him up before I did.”

“You looked him up, too?” said Helmholtz.

“I got so sick of everybody saying how dumb Big Floyd was, and how smart that stupid Alvin Schroeder was,” said Selma. “I had to find out for myself.”

“What did you find?” said Helmholtz.

“I found out Alvin Schroeder was a big bluffer,” said Selma, “acting so smart all the time. He’s actually dumb. And I found out Big Floyd wasn’t dumb at all. Actually, he’s a big loafer. Actually, he’s a genius like you.”

“Um,” said Helmholtz. “And you told them so?”

Selma hesitated. And then, so steeped in crime she could hardly worsen her case, she nodded. “Yes—I told them,” she said. “I told them for their own good.”

From three until four that afternoon, Helmholtz was in charge of an extracurricular activity, the Railsplitters, the glee club of Lincoln High. On this particular occasion, the sixty voices of the Railsplitters were augmented by a grand piano, a brass choir of three trumpets, two trombones, and a tuba, and the bright, sweet chimes of a glockenspiel.

The musicians who backed the glee club so richly had been recruited by Helmholtz since the lunch hour. Helmholtz had been frantically busy in his tiny office since lunch, making plans and sending off messengers like the commander of a battalion under fire.

When the clock on the wall of the rehearsal room stood at one minute until four, Helmholtz pinched off with his thumb and forefinger the almost insufferably beautiful final chord of the song the augmented glee club had been rehearsing.

When Helmholtz had pinched it off, he and the group looked stunned.

They had found the lost chord.

Never had there been such beauty.

The undamped voice of the glockenspiel was the last to die. The high song of the last chime struck on the glockenspiel faded into infinity, and it seemed to promise that it
would be forever audible to anyone willing to listen hard enough.

“That’s it—that’s certainly it,” whispered Helmholtz raptly. “Ladies and gentlemen—I can’t thank you enough.”

The buzzer on the wall clock sounded. It was four o’clock.

Right on the dot of four, Schroeder, Selma, and Big Floyd came into the rehearsal room, just as Helmholtz had told them to do. Helmholtz stepped down from the podium, led the three into his office, and closed the door.

“I suppose you all know why I’ve asked you to come,” said Helmholtz.

“I don’t,” said Schroeder.

“It’s about I.Q.s, Schroeder,” said Helmholtz. And he told Schroeder about catching Selma in the file room. Schroeder shrugged listlessly.

“If any of you three talks about this to anybody,” said Helmholtz, “it will get Selma into terrible trouble, and me, too. I haven’t reported the very bad thing Selma’s done, and that makes me an accessory.”

Selma paled.

“Selma,” said Helmholtz, “what made you think that one particular number on the file cards was an I.Q.?”

“I—I read up on I.Q.s in the library,” said Selma, “and then I looked myself up in the files, and I found the number on my card that was probably my I.Q.”

“Interesting,” said Helmholtz, “and a tribute to your modesty. That number you thought was your I.Q., Selma—that was your weight. And when you looked up the rest of us here, all you found out was who was heavy and who was light. In my case, you discovered that I was once a very fat
boy. Big Floyd and I are far from being geniuses, and small Schroeder here is far from being a moron.”

“Oh,” said Selma.

Big Floyd gave a sigh that sounded like a freight whistle. “I told you I was dumb,” he said to Selma wretchedly. “I told you I wasn’t any genius.” He pointed helplessly at Schroeder. “He’s the genius. He’s the one who’s got it. He’s the one who’s got the brains to carry him right up into the stars or somewhere! I told you that!”

Big Floyd pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, as though to jar his brains into working better. “Boy,” he said tragically, “I sure proved how dumb I was, believing for even one minute I had something on the ball.”

“There’s only one test to pay any attention to,” said Helmholtz, “and that’s the test of life. That’s where you’ll make the score that counts. That’s true for Schroeder, for Selma, for you, Big Floyd, for me—for everybody.”

“You can tell who’s going to amount to something,” said Big Floyd.

“Can you?” said Helmholtz. “I can’t. Life is nothing but surprises to me.”

“Think of the surprises that are waiting for a guy like me,” said Big Floyd. He nodded at Schroeder. “Then think of the surprises that are waiting for a guy like him.”

“Think of the surprises that are waiting for everybody!” said Helmholtz. “My mind reels!” He opened his office door, indicating that the interview was at an end.

Selma, Big Floyd, and Schroeder shuffled from Helmholtz’s office into the rehearsal room. Their chins were not held high. The talk from Helmholtz hadn’t inspired them
much. On the contrary, the talk, like so many pep talks on the high school level, had been fairly depressing.

And then, as Selma, Big Floyd, and Schroeder shuffled past the glee club, the glee club and the musicians in support of it stood up.

At a signal from Helmholtz, there was a brilliant fanfare of brass.

The fanfare brought Selma, Big Floyd, and Schroeder to a halt and to startled attention.

The fanfare went on and on—intricately. And the grand piano and the glockenspiel joined the fanfare—clanged, banged, and pealed triumphantly, like church bells celebrating a great victory.

The seeming church bells and the fanfare died reluctantly.

The sixty voices of the glee club began to murmur sweetly, to murmur low.

And then the sixty voices, crying out wordlessly, began to climb. They reached a plateau, and they seemed to want to stay there.

But the brasses and the grand piano and the glockenspiel taunted them into climbing again, taunted the voices into overcoming all obstacles above them, taunted the voices into aspiring to the stars.

Up and up the voices went, to unbelievable heights. And as the wordless voices climbed, they seemed to promise that, when they reached the uppermost limits of their aspirations, they would at last speak words. They seemed to promise too that, when they spoke those words, those words would be stunning truth.

The voices now could go no higher.

They strained melodramatically. Melodramatically, they could rise no more.

And then, musical miracle of miracles, a soprano sent her voice not a little above the rest, but far, far, far above the rest. And, soaring so far above the rest, she found words.

“I break the chains that bind meeeeeeeeeeee,”
she sang. Her voice was a thread of pure sunlight.

The piano and the glockenspiel both made sounds like breaking chains.

The glee club groaned in harmonic wonder at the broken chains.

“I leave the clown I was behind me,”
sang a rumbling bass.

The trumpets laughed ironically, and then the entire brass choir sang a haunting phrase from “Auld Lang Syne.”

“It was wonderful of you to remind me,”
sang a baritone,
“That if I looked I would find me.”

In very swift order, the soprano sang a phrase from “Someday I’ll Find You,” the full glee club sang a phrase from “These Foolish Things,” and the piano played a phrase from “Among My Souvenirs.”

“Oh, Selma, Selma, Selma, thank you,”
sang all the basses together.

“Selma?” echoed the real Selma in real life.

“You,” said Helmholtz to Selma. “This is a song Big Floyd, the well-known genius, wrote for you.”

“For me?” said Selma, astonished.

“Sh!” said Helmholtz.

“I can never
—
”
sang the soprano.

“Never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never—”
chanted the glee club.

“Say—”
rumbled the basses.

“Good
—
”
piped the soprano.

And now the entire ensemble, Helmholtz included, joined in a hair-raising final chord,
“Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

Helmholtz pinched off the final chord with his thumb and forefinger.

Tears streamed down Big Floyd’s cheeks. “Oh my, oh my, oh my,” he murmured. “Who arranged it?” he said.

“A genius,” said Helmholtz.

“Schroeder?” said Big Floyd.

“No,” said Schroeder. “I—”

“How did you like it, Selma?” said Helmholtz.

There was no reply. Selma Ritter had fainted dead away.

There was a parking lot, and then a guitar school, and then Fred’s O.K. Used Car Lot, and then the hypnotist’s house, and then a vacant lot with the foundation of a mansion still on it, and then the Beeler Brothers’ Funeral Home. Autumn winds, experimenting with the idea of a hard winter, made little twists of soot and paper, made the plastic propellers over the used car lot go
frrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
.

The city was Indianapolis, the largest city not on a navigable waterway in the world.

It was to the hypnotist’s house that the two city detectives came. They were Detectives Carney and Foltz, Carney young and dapper, Foltz middle-aged and rumpled. Carney went up the hypnotist’s steps like a tap dancer. Foltz, though he was going to do all the talking, trudged far behind. Carney’s interest was specific. He was going straight for the hypnotist. Foltz’s attention was diffused. He marveled at the monstrous architecture of the hypnotist’s twenty-room house, let his mournful eyes climb the tower at one corner of the house. There had to be a ballroom at the top of the tower. There were ballrooms at the tops of all the towers that the rich had abandoned.

Foltz reached the hypnotist’s door at last, rang the bell. The only hint of quackery was a small sign over the doorbell.
K. HOLLOMON WEEMS,
it said,
HYPNOTIC THERAPY
.

Weems himself came to the door. He was in his fifties, small, narrow-shouldered, neat. His nose was long, his lips full and red, and his bald head had a seeming phosphorescence. His eyes were unspectacular—pale blue, clear, ordinary.

“Doctor Weems?” said Foltz, grumpily polite.

“‘Doctor’ Weems?” said Weems. “There is no ‘Doctor’ Weems here. There is a very plain ‘Mister’ Weems. He stands before you.”

“In your line of work,” said Foltz, “I’d think a man would almost have to have some kind of doctor’s degree.”

“As it happens,” said Weems, “I hold two doctor’s degrees—one from Budapest, another from Edinburgh.” He smiled faintly. “I don’t use the title Doctor, however. I wouldn’t want anyone to mistake me for a physician.” He shivered in the winds. “Won’t you come in?”

The three went into what had been the parlor of the mansion, what was the hypnotist’s office now. There was no nonsense about the furnishings. They were functional, gray-enameled steel—a desk, a few chairs, a filing cabinet, a bookcase. There were no pictures, no framed certificates on the high walls.

Weems sat down behind his desk, invited his visitors to sit. “The chairs aren’t very comfortable, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Where do you keep your equipment, Mr. Weems?” said Foltz.

“What equipment is that?” said Weems.

Foltz’s stubby hands worked in air. “I assume you’ve got something you hypnotize people with. A light or something they stare at?”

“No,” said Weems. “I’m all the apparatus there is.”

“You pull the blinds when you hypnotize somebody?” said Foltz.

“No,” said Weems. He volunteered no more information, but looked back and forth between the detectives, inviting them to state their business.

“We’re from the police, Mr. Weems,” said Foltz, and he showed his identification.

“You are not telling me the news,” Weems said.

“You were expecting the police?” said Foltz.

“I was born in Romania, sir—where one is taught from birth to expect the police.”

“I thought maybe you had some idea what we were here about?” said Foltz.

Weems sat back, twiddled his thumbs. “Oh—generally, generally, generally,” he said. “I arouse vague fears among the simpler sorts wherever I go. Sooner or later they coax the police into having a look at me, to see if I might not be performing black magic here.”