The FLute

THE FLUTE

“Creed,” the Maestro’s voice gurgled electronically, as he whispered into his artificial larynx. “I want you to be the executor of my estate.”

Several years after the Maestro had given up performing, and three months before he died, he had sent me a note, asking me to see him on business. I hadn’t seen him for a while, not since he had first gone to the hospital.

The day nurse showed me into his studio, which had been turned into his bedroom. He was sitting up in bed. His face destroyed by the cancer and hollowed out by the operations. Most of his lower jaw and cheek bone on the right side were gone. Some effort had been made to mend things, but he could never have played again. That realization led him to stop the operations.

“Maestro, I—”

“When we first met, you called me Nicky. Have I changed so much?”

“Nicky, this is hard for me.”

“But I’m the one dying, not you. Humor me a while, and I will let you go.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“You did, but I understand. I’ve become a monster, and at our age, too young for either of us to die.”

I fixed a drink. A wave of nausea made me grip the edge of the liquor-cabinet. The musty odor of medicine and decay was cloying and retching.

“Open the window. I’m accustomed to the smell,” he said.

A few minutes later I felt better. I sat down on the sofa opposite the daybed.

I had met Niccolo Torcello when we were both much younger. I was then a junior partner at the firm. My wife and I were socially active, and I was one of the trustees of the Chamber Music Society. There was a cancellation during the season; Niccolo was the replacement. His solo career was just starting. He stayed with us, and became my best friend.

“The University has been very good to me.” The larynx croaked. “I want you to make arrangements for them to get my collection of instruments, manuscripts, books, and recordings.”

“I would have thought the Library of Congress, at least they—”

“But the University gave me an honorary doctorate.”

“Of all your achievements, why should you care?”

“Because I never graduated from high school.”

“That doesn’t matter,” I said.

“Of course, not now.” The Maestro's eyes twinkled.

“It never mattered.”

“But it did. Even the man who plays the triangle has at least master’s degree. Then, I got my doctorate. That’s why I want them to have my collections, everything except no one is to have the . . . good . . . flute.”

I knew what he meant, the platinum flute. Who didn’t know it? Every picture, every concert, every record, it was Niccolo and his platinum flute.

As his friend, I shook my head at his vanity, perhaps even arrogance, but as his lawyer I agreed.

“The Dean, Jeffreys, is a petty man,” Niccolo went on. “When I first started teaching there, he taught flute also. All of his students laughed at him—I know—they told me. He'll want my flute. He played it several times when I first got it, and he knows how good it is. He's offered to buy it from me. He'll do anything to get it. . . . Destroy it!”

* * *

“The platinum flute?” Dean Jeffreys asked, thumbing through the list I had made giving the particulars of the Maestro's bequeathment. “Where is it? It's not even mentioned.”

“Dr. Jeffreys, I hope that you can understand my position, I gave Maestro Torcello my word, as his friend and attorney.”

Jeffreys stared at me as if I had just told him that his Rolex were a fake. He was Dean of the Music School, where twice a year for fifteen years the Maestro had given month-long master classes. In spite of the Maestro's reputation and genius, to a man like Jeffreys, the Maestro was an employee, who should show his loyalty.

“What position?” Jeffreys asked. “To withhold the most famous instrument in the world today? You would deny us our right to examine it? You would keep others from playing it?”

“As I said, I have given my word to Maestro Torcello. I am not free to discuss this.”

“He promised me.” Jeffreys’ face reddened.

“Dr. Jeffreys, his commitment was general, and other than that flute, you are getting everything. This one matter is something which has been left to my discretion.”

“Mr. LaGrande, Creed, promises have been made—”

“Not by me.”

“Yes, not by you, but nonetheless they exist. Endowments have been promised, and, how can I put this, careers are at stake. You understand how the University works. That flute is the cornerstone of the collection.”

“You and your collection will have to do without.”

“Mr. LaGrande, my collection will have that flute. How would it look if it wasn't with Torcello's other instruments?”

“On this there can be no discussion. It’s final.”

Jeffreys smiled. It was the sort of smile I could imagine him giving a graduate student caught making fun of him, a kind of now-I've-got-you look. “You must know how much business the University gives your law firm. No? How would it be if the senior managing partner were to lose their biggest account?”

“Jeffreys, don’t play games with me.”

“I’m not. In these days of budget cuts, our legal bills with your firm are quite high. I'm sure we could find other, less expensive, services.” He opened his red leather appointment book. “I'm scheduled to meet with the president at three fifteen.”

If he weren't bluffing, and if, in spite of our record and experience handling the University's legal matters, we lost the account, the firm would survive. We would have to lay off fourteen good lawyers, but we'd get through. I shook my head: all this over a flute.

“If anyone deserves the damn thing,” I thought, “it’s this jack ass.”

“What do I tell the president?”

I stood up and walked to the door. As far as I was concerned, the meeting was over.

“LaGrande?”

“Jeffreys, quit fucking around,” I said as the door closed behind me.

* * *

A few days later, I met with the Maestro. I had revised his last will and testament to strengthen it against what I feared might become a point of litigation with Jeffreys.

The room was still cloying, but I no longer struggled to fight down the nausea nor did I see his face, although it was a difficult time for my assistant. For me, it was now the little things that brought home the Maestro's condition.

The nurse helped to prop him up and I put my leather portfolio with the papers on it in his lap.

“Nicky.” I pointed to the line. “Here.” But he was so weak that merely holding the pen and signing was an ordeal.

I had the nurse and my assistant witness.

“That’s it,” I said closing the portfolio. “Your estate is taken care of.”

He nodded and tried to talk. The nurse picked up the artificial larynx and held it for him.

“And Jeffrey’s?” he asked.

“He'll only get what you want him to have.” I had quickly come to dislike Jeffreys, but I wasn't sure that the Maestro's vanity should preclude everyone from having access to his great flute. “Have you considered giving your flute elsewhere? We—”

“Please,” Nicky said, looking at my assistant, “leave us.” He turned to the nurse. “You too.”

She handed me the larynx.

We sat for a few minutes as if waiting for something.

“I must tell you,” Nicky said. “You remember how my career took off a few years after we met?”

“It was remarkable. You and your flute became famous.”

“My flute, yes. It is the whole and the end of my life.”

He winced, and pink spittle trickled from his mouth. I got a tissue and cleaned him. He was tired, but his eyes were still piercing. I felt his gratitude and his anger at being so dependent.

He pointed to the bottles of pills. “There’s a tape.”

I pushed them aside and picked up a cassette tape. “This?”

“Play it, there's a machine next to the TV.”

I got the tape deck and sat next to Nicky as I put the tape in. “What is it?”

“I received it twelve years ago. It's from a former student of mine. An older man, who always wanted to be great, but who never could be. He worked hard, but I had to tell him. I knew that I had broken his heart, but he carried on, trying to pretend he hadn't heard me, nor understood. A few months later he canceled his lessons. Then, maybe the next year, I received the flute. It was from him. There was a letter. It said that he had had it on order for some time, and it had arrived only a week earlier. Since I had shown him that he could never be deserving of it, he wanted me to have it.”

“The platinum flute?” I asked, amazed that someone would have given away such an instrument.

“Yes. After I had tried it, I could never give it up. It was made in England. Everything about it was perfect. The tone holes and the head were rescaled. The entire design subtly changed to take advantage of the resonance of the platinum. And the embouchure plate—that's its soul.” He paused, exhausted, closed his eyes, and struggled to continue, “Play it.”

I'll never forget or forgive H. Robertson Hughes, although I never met him. I’ve put the tape in a safety deposit box, and listened to it only once, after Nicky died. But I remember his every word.

“Maestro, it has been a few years since we last spoke. I've been diagnosed as having lymphosarcoma. It has spread too far. My doctors have sent me home to put things in order. This tape is my last task.

“I hated you, you know. Hated you with every ounce of my being. It was so easy for you to dismiss me. 'Second rate,’ you said. And I practiced, I worked so much harder than you ever did. Fifty years, that's how long I had been at it, lost in one second. 'Second rate.’ Maybe you were right, I see that now. But then—then I hated you.

“You must throw out the flute. You must. I lied to you. It wasn’t made for me, but for you. It cost . . . no, that’s my business.

“The hard part was the embouchure, it’s uranium. I had to have it cast in Germany. It was plated, with a platinum insert for the hole. The flute maker never knew.

“I don’t know how long it will take, that depends on you, but I know it will kill you.

“I am not asking your forgiveness. That would be meaningless; I’ll be dead by the time you would give it anyway. But dying has . . . . Throw it out.”

We sat silent, in the horror of that tape.

“But, the flute, I’ve seen you play it, every concert. How could you?” I asked.

“But the sound. The feel. How could I not play it?”

“Didn’t you know the price?”

“Look at me. Don’t you think I knew? This didn't happen overnight. My gums started bleeding after the first six months. When I lost a few teeth, the doctor was suspicious. He said that I had all the symptoms of radiation poisoning. He just couldn’t figure out how.

“Hughes’ tape confirmed what I suspected. I had long since made my decision. I only used it for performances, I thought I'd be okay, or, at least put off the inevitable.”

“Nicky, it’s killed you.”

“I tried to play my other flutes. None were close.”

“Couldn’t you have had it copied?”

“I tried that also. I have three copies. When I asked why none of them were as good, I was told that the platinum flute was a quirk. Everything about it was perfect. Not only was it superbly designed and crafted, but all of the tolerances, and there are always compromises and tolerances, all of them stacked in my favor. There’s no way it can ever be duplicated.”

“The stories about your getting sick after performances, as if you had made a deal with the Devil, were true?”

“Yes. And the Devil’s come to claim his due.”

I saw Nicky every week after that. He might have given up music, but his spirit stayed.

Jeffreys did talk with the president about my firm's representation. The matter was given to an oversight committee for consideration, and I met with them to go over our billing for the past three years. On my way home, I stopped at Nicky’s.

The day nurse stayed with us, holding the larynx, wiping his forehead with a damp cloth, and giving him sips of water.

I told him about Jeffreys’ threat, and the meeting with the committee.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “What can I do?”

“Nothing.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “You might have gotten me into this, but now it’s my battle.”

He had known that I would fight for him.

The nurse left the room for a few minutes. He pointed to the water and whispered, “Thirsty.”

I had to hold him up and support his head while tipping the glass. Water dribbled down his chin. I tried to use a spoon, but I shook too much.

His eyes twinkled. “Creed,” he said, “quit fucking around.”

Nicky died the next day. The nurse said that after I left, he fell in and out of unconsciousness, and never said another word.