The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto (47 page)

Frankie stared in disbelief. “For how long?”

She put both hands on the cane.

“Until this moment.”

Robert Schumann’s haunting composition “Träumerei” (“Daydream”) is a piece he wrote to recall his childhood. Frankie learned it from El Maestro. It features a repeated four-note passage, followed each time by a different chord that changes the music’s mood. It is simple yet captivating, evoking the dreams of a child. But the entire piece hangs on one crescendo, a remarkable sound that follows the final four-note build, a chord so piercingly beautiful that everything before only makes sense once you’ve heard it.

For Frankie Presto, the nun’s tale was that chord. It pulled him out of the cloudy dream that for so long had shrouded his story, tumbling details into place like the pins of a turned lock.

This woman, he learned, had been less than a mile from him for much of his life, a silent partner in nearly every band he’d joined. It was Josefa who distracted the police when Frankie stole the phonograph as a boy. It was Josefa who paid a gypsy to stop his cart as Frankie ran from soldiers. It was Josefa who trailed Frankie to England, who found him on the docks in Southampton and who sometimes dropped coins in his guitar case to keep him from starving.

It was Josefa who followed Frankie to America, bringing the hairless dog she had rescued from Spain. It was Josefa who shadowed the boy after Baffa’s sister rejected him, and who told police that he was sleeping in an alley, so they would bring him to an orphanage. It was Josefa who took work in the orphanage kitchen, to watch him as he grew, and who left the kitchen window open so the sad child and the hairless dog could be reunited.

It was Josefa who witnessed Frankie’s blue string incident at the Detroit nightclub, and Josefa who followed him to Nashville and New Orleans and informed a young Aurora York that a Spanish guitarist had been playing under a bridge and had been asking about her. It was Josefa who urged medics to the stage at Woodstock, to get a bleeding Frankie Presto to the helicopters, and it was Josefa who, working as a housekeeper in a London hotel, left the shades open every day in the room of a singer named Tony Bennett so that he might see Frankie sitting on a park bench and perhaps help him return to music.

Decades later, on a New Zealand island, it was Josefa who took an abandoned baby from the church and left it in the woods, knowing Frankie and Aurora would make a family.

And on that family’s fateful return to Villareal, it was Josefa, dressed in the heavy clothing that she used to disguise herself, who came to Frankie’s show at the
taberna
, and who hid in an alley after it was over, knowing that an old conga player was lurking there as well.

“Then . . . you killed Alberto?” Frankie said.

“May the Lord forgive me.”

“You turned yourself in.”

“I could do no less.”

“You went to prison.”

“For nineteen years.”

“Why did you shoot him?”

“Because I thought he would harm you. I knew he could be violent. I witnessed it before. So I took a weapon. My life, my entire existence, was to protect you, Francisco. He was running your way. I shot.”

She covered her mouth, as if the memory still stunned her. Tears fell quickly down her spotted skin.

“In the end, it was justice. That is what I tell myself. What he took from you, no man should take.”

“He killed my teacher,” Frankie said.

“Not just your teacher,” she whispered. “Your father.”

Suddenly, Frankie couldn’t breathe.

“What are you saying?”

“The man you called Maestro? His real name was Carlos Andrés Presto, the husband of Carmencita. He was once the most promising guitarist in all of Valencia. But he lost his sight fighting in the war. And when he lost your mother—and, as he thought, the baby she carried—he lost himself.”

“That can’t be true,” Frankie whispered.

“It is. But church bells chimed when you were born, Francisco. God gave you a new father in Baffa Rubio, and in time, unaware, he returned you to your real father. It was Maestro who visited Baffa in prison. It was Baffa’s money that Maestro used to send you to America. It was that money Alberto stole when he pushed Maestro into the sea. And it was that money I stole a week later from Alberto, a great deal of money, enabling me to watch you all these years. Everything is connected, Francisco. My father used to tell me a gypsy expression ‘
Le duy vas xalaven pe.
’ The hands wash each other.”

“You stole the money back?” Frankie said.

“There are few sins I did not commit in my sworn protection of you. But to what matter? The greatest sin, I committed first. I let you go.

“During my years in prison, I could only pray for your safety. I thought I would never again see your face. But now, by His grace, the Lord has brought you back to this place, so that I may make my final request.”

“What do you want?” Frankie said.

She lowered her eyes.

“To ask your forgiveness.”

Frankie’s head rolled back, heavy. He rubbed his temples. This was too much to comprehend. He kept imagining scenes he was not a part of, his mother dying in a burning church; his teacher being pushed into the sea; Alberto being robbed; and this woman, this old, broken, gap-toothed woman, somehow being there for all of it, playing his life’s strings like invisible fingers. He felt manipulated. He rose slowly and glared at the shriveled person who claimed to be his guardian. He had not asked for her. She had toyed with his existence, making all that he thought he knew some kind of lie.

“No,” he said. “I don’t forgive you. Go. Now.”

“Francisco—”

“Leave me alone. Forever. Do you hear me? I don’t need you. I never needed you.”

“That is not true,” she whispered.

But he was already limping away, putting the woman, the guitar, and Francisco Tárrega behind him.

63

FRANKIE NEVER RETURNED TO THE HOTEL. HE DID NOT EAT.
He did not drink. He wandered in a trance toward the edge of the city, and sat down near the hermitage on the banks of the Mijares River. His frustration was burning in his chest. He imagined himself being thrown in this water. Imagined Baffa Rubio finding him. Imagined the disgraced nun lying in muddy brush, seeing him taken away. Whose life was this? It felt like an opera with his name on it, but one he had not written.

He stayed near the river most of the day, by the old water mill and the shepherd boy sculpture. Finally, with the afternoon sun losing its heat, Frankie entered a small church once frequented by refugees hiding in the caves.

No one was inside. His footsteps echoed. He moved to the altar and lowered himself to his knees. For the first time since he was a child, he opened his hands for something other than the guitar. And despite El Maestro’s warning that “God gives you nothing,” he asked the Lord for some sort of answer. Some clarity. Some peace.

He waited. Listening. A child of mine expects a sound.

He heard only silence.

As his teacher had predicted.

He rose slowly and made his way back toward the city.

The festival’s last night was held in the sold-out Auditorio Municipal. By the time he got there, Frankie was exhausted. He hadn’t eaten. He didn’t have his ticket. He went to the back of the building, familiar, as musicians are, with stage exits and entrances, and found a door to slip through. Down a hallway, he saw performers getting ready, and he caught a glimpse of Kai, wearing a red dress that had once belonged to Aurora.

“Papa?” She hurried to him. “Where were you?”

“You look beautiful.”

“I was really worried.”

“I went walking.”

“Are you all right? You’re all sweaty.”

“I’m all right. You just think about your playing.”

“Do you have your seat?”

“Maybe I will stay back here. Is that all right?”

She found him a chair.

“Rest, Papa.”

“Go prepare,” he said. “I’m fine. Good luck.”

Kai disappeared down the hall.

Minutes later, the competition began. Frankie heard the orchestra on the other side of the wall, the rise and fall of the strings and the winds, and the quiet passages where the guitarists were featured. He remembered the first time he ever heard such sounds, as a boy in the wings of a Cleveland theater, listening to Duke Ellington. But he could no longer rouse that youthful wonder. His eyes stayed locked on his muddy shoes. He had never felt so tired.

When it was Kai’s time to play, he moved slowly to the wing of the stage. The last of the competitors, she selected a pair of Tárrega compositions, difficult for most guitarists, but part of her life growing up. And, I am proud to say, she performed them flawlessly. The orchestra fell in behind her as if they’d played together for years. When she finished, spectators nodded vigorously and rose to their feet, whooping and clapping. Had the judges chosen anyone else, the crowd might have revolted.

When she was announced as the winner, Kai stepped forward and bowed, and Frankie felt a surge of pride exceeding anything he’d ever felt for himself. She was led to the front of the stage and given two bouquets of flowers to go with her award.

“Thank you so much,” she said into a microphone, in perfect Spanish. “I am most honored to play the works of Villareal’s native son, the great Francisco Tárrega.”

More applause.

“But I would not know a single note on the guitar if not for another of your native sons. He is my father.”

The crowd murmured. She turned and waved at Frankie. He had not expected this. He felt dizzy.

“Papa. Please come out.”

He shook his head no.

“Papa . . . Please . . .”

He squeezed his fists, then locked them behind his back. He walked onto the stage with his head lowered. The crowd applauded.

“Here is my father, who you might know better as . . . Frankie Presto. He grew up in this city and he learned his music here.”

The applause deepened. This was a surprise. Frankie nodded meekly at the crowd. He realized he had not been on a stage in many years.

“Papa, today someone brought us this,” Kai said, pointing to an approaching stagehand. “Your guitar from when you were a child here. It is a miracle.”