The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto (40 page)

Frankie noticed it was damaged, with breaks and stains that had not been repaired.

“Do you know the story of this guitar?” Frankie asked Jacinto.

“I do, señor,” the man said, straightening up as if making a presentation. “It was one of Tárrega’s favorites. He played it for twenty years. When he was forced to replace it from too much use, he sought out a man to restore it. After many attempts, the man succeeded.”

“And?”

“Tárrega and his guitar were reunited.”

“So he left it behind when he died?”

“Yes and no, señor. Tárrega left the guitar to his family, but in time, his brother Vincente sold it. He thought he was selling it to the famous musician Domingo Prat, a disciple of Tárrega’s who lived in Buenos Aires. So he put it on a ship and sent it to South America.

“But when it got there, it did not go to the great Domingo Prat. Instead, it went to a ten-year-old girl. Over the years, it fell into disrepair.”

“In South America?” Frankie said.

“Yes.”

“How did it get back here?”

“A former student of Tárrega’s discovered it years later in Buenos Aires, in a house, lying on a couch. He helped arrange for its return to Spain.”

Frankie gazed at the guitar, which had a break in the body near the neck, and was missing pieces of the rosette that framed the sound hole.

“Why did he bother? It’s broken.”

“Just the same, señor,” the man said. “It belongs back where it made its best music, does it not?”

Frankie stared at the instrument. He wished El Maestro could have seen it or, even better, played it in its healthier days. Connected to the great Francisco Tárrega? How he would have loved that! Frankie thanked Jacinto and left the building. But for the rest of the day he thought about that guitar’s journey: made here, shipped on a boat, misdirected, knocked about, now returned to native soil.

It belongs back where it made its best music.

He decided he would play at the
taberna
. To honor his teacher.

And, if possible, to summon him.

Homecomings in music are never predictable. Some are raucously successful (the rock musician Bruce Springsteen playing in New Jersey), some are bittersweet (the Russian pianist Vladimir Horowitz returning to Moscow after sixty years of exile), and some are, frankly, less than they were hoped to be.

Frankie’s homecoming was hastily arranged, so the crowd would be mostly regulars. Still, Frankie hoped the word might spread; if El Maestro was alive, perhaps he would hear that his student had returned. Villareal was still not that big, right?

He arrived early with his guitar. There were men outside smoking by a row of motorcycles. Inside, he noticed the stage was wider than it had once been, and the house band, slowly arriving, was a nine-piece ensemble, whose musicians ranged from middle-aged to quite old. Frankie went over material with the bandleader, a thin-armed piano player. Unlike forty years earlier, foreign songs were now commonly performed in Spain, and the man nodded with each of Frankie’s selections.

Frankie chose a variety of material. Determined to erase the bad memories of this place, he selected a few of his own compositions, “I Want To Love You” and “Our Secret,” but also instrumentals like “St. Louis Blues,” “Tiger Rag,” and Django Reinhardt’s “Parfum,” along with any other song he could remember from El Maestro’s last performance on this stage.

The crowd shuffled in. Seats were taken. Drinks ordered. The lights went down.

Few people noticed a heavily clothed figure taking a chair in the back.

The owner gave Frankie an ebullient introduction, to polite applause, but with each number, the ovations intensified, as Frankie grew more focused on the memory of that last night. He played Ellington, Schumann, and Tárrega as El Maestro had taught him, as if the next best thing to finding his old teacher would be to conjure up his spirit. He blazed through several flamenco numbers, pleasing the Spanish audience. When he sang his famous songs, the patrons cheered, delighted that the man who’d made these records was actually here in Villareal.

Frankie took no breaks. He never left the stage. Drinks were replenished, more cigarettes smoked. For nearly two hours, the guitarist’s music grew ever more piercing. An old
jota
melody. A Muddy Waters blues.

For his last number, he chose a very specific song: “Avalon.” It was the first thing he’d ever played for an audience, on this very stage in 1945, and the only piece he’d ever performed with his beloved teacher.

As he started the first chords, beads of sweat trickled down his forehead. He pictured El Maestro sitting alongside him, whispering the old words, urging him on.

“Sing the song.”

“But I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“I’m scared.”

“Yes. And you will be scared again. All your life. You must conquer this. Face them and pretend they aren’t there.”

“Maestro—”

“You can do it. Always remember I said you can do it.”

As the band fell in behind him, Frankie noticed the crowd’s bobbing heads and tapping fingers. The beat grew louder, and some patrons clapped along. Frankie sang:

I found my love in Avalon

Beside the bay,

I left my love in Avalon

And sailed away.

He looked at the owner, who was clapping with the rest of them.

I dream of her in Avalon

from dusk till dawn

So I guess I’ll travel on

To Avalon.

While part of him braced for history to repeat, there was no protest this time, only enthusiasm, and Frankie found himself looking left and right, in some deluded hope that he would see El Maestro at a table, smiling from behind his dark glasses, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Deep down, this had been his wish for years, seeking what every student desperately seeks from a beloved teacher: final approval.

It did not happen. Frankie completed his spirited solo and reached the last lyrics like a runner crossing the finish line. He hit three chords to end it, the last one ringing out to the crowd, and he bowed his head. The owner jumped to his feet and the others followed, standing in a noisy shower of appreciation.

Frankie slowly rose and held up his guitar. He thought of Tárrega’s long-lost instrument and was overwhelmed suddenly by the deepest longing he’d ever felt in his life: to see his old teacher one more time.

Instead he got an ovation. He forced a smile. Homecomings are never predictable. And there are few things emptier than applause when you feel you don’t deserve it.

A music arranger has a difficult task, coordinating instruments into a mellifluous blend. What happened next in Frankie’s story can best be told as a series of arranged sounds, coming together to reach a climactic finish.

There was high applause, like soaring violins, when Frankie finished his show. Then bass lines of adult conversation as patrons discussed it on their way out. There were the percussive sounds of the band breaking down, packing up their horns and cymbals, and the soft scribbling of Frankie signing autographs for older fans who remembered his records.

There was the enthused baritone of the owner, asking Frankie to return anytime. There were soft vocals like tickled piano keys between Frankie and several musicians, and questions about a blind man that rose in hope and sank in disappointment, like a glissando on a flute.

Later, with the place nearly empty, there was the sound of the back door creaking open as Frankie stepped into the alley where he’d once escaped in a car.

And, finally, the sound of a match being lit.

“I know you,” a voice said in Spanish.

Frankie saw the orange glow of a cigarette tip.

“How do you know me?”

“That song. I have not heard it in many years. But I could never forget it. You are Francisco.”

“And you are?”

“Drunk.”

“Your name, sir?”

“You don’t know me? I was playing onstage with you all night. In the back.”

An old man wobbled out from the shadows, clearly inebriated. His hair was sparse and curled white. His shoulders were stooped beneath a draping jacket.

“The congas,” he said.

Frankie tilted his head curiously. The old man placed two fingers around his lips.

“Years ago, I wore a mustache. You see?”

He lowered his hand.

“I am Alberto.”

Frankie’s eyes widened. “Alberto,” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“You drove with us that last night . . .”

“I did.”

Frankie felt his heart racing.

“Alberto, please, I have been looking for El Maestro. My teacher—your friend. He—”

“I know who he is.”

“Do you know
where
he is?”

Alberto scanned Frankie’s face.

“Yes.”

“He’s
alive
?”

“No.”

Frankie felt his stomach drop.

“When did he die?”

“Stop this game. You know the truth.”

“What truth?”

Alberto dropped his cigarette. He inhaled with a sniff and tried to stand up straight.

“You want me to say it? Fine. I killed him.”

Frankie swallowed.

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean?” Alberto said, looking away. “What do I mean? You want me to play it on the skins of a drum? I killed him. It is why you are here. Stop playing with me. Get it over with.”

Frankie felt his insides shaking, the start of his soul breaking loose from his body. When he spoke, there was no air getting to his lungs, and his voice no longer sounded like his voice.

“Explain yourself, Señor Alberto.”

Alberto lifted his eyebrows.

“No one sent you?”

“Sent me?”

“To avenge his death.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I pushed him into the sea. Just after your ship left.”

“But why—”

“Money. A bag of money. It was stolen from me a week later.” His head dropped. “So now you know.”

“But you
liked
him.”

“I did.”

“He trusted you. . . .”

“A mistake.”

“For money?” Frankie whispered.

“Yes. Yes! I am a thief! All right?” When he said it, he seemed beaten, his voice a shaky bassoon. But then it rose to an angry pitch, fueled by alcohol and years of guilt. He began to sway. “For money! For money!”

He reached beneath his coat and whipped out a gun. He pointed it straight at Frankie’s chest.

“Give me yours!”

“No, please—”

“Give it to me! If you won’t take revenge, then I will take what you have. Give me your money. Or maybe I’ll kill you, too.”

Frankie held up his hands. He opened his fingers. In the lamplight, Alberto saw the scars covering Frankie’s left palm. He leaned in, blinking.

“What did you do to yourself, Francisco?” he whispered. “How can you play that way? . . .”