10 comments/ 25669 views/ 4 favorites Woman in Chains By: Adrian Leverkuhn I Tracy Tomlinson walked down the stairs as quietly as she could. She slipped into the kitchen like a shadow and put on coffee, then walked outside and down the driveway; she groped around in the dark for the newspaper, nearly tripped over a football when she bent over to pick-up the plastic wrapped paper. It was still too dark out to see the headlines, but she hardly cared about them anymore. Mark kept up with all that stuff. The world would get along just fine without her knowing who had been fighting what war over this or that reason last week, and she knew she'd greet next week's war with about as much interest. Once upon a time she'd cared about the world. She'd cared about how she looked, what she ate, what Mark thought of the way she looked, what her friends thought of her, even what her children thought of her -- but no more. She had grown tired -- tired of life, of living, of eating and breathing. Fucking, she remembered, had been the last to go. She'd always loved a good rough fuck, but Mark had lost interest somewhere along the way and now even that simple pleasure resided somewhere in the back stacks of unwanted memories. She climbed the steps back into the kitchen and pulled down oatmeal and put water on to boil, then walked upstairs to her boy's room. Brian was on his back, his morning hard-on rising under the sheet from the center of his bed like the troops raising the flag on Iwo Jima. She shook her head and turned on his light, walked down to Stacy's room but heard the shower going in the hall bathroom and knew her daughter was already up. When she poked her head in their bedroom she heard Mark in the bathroom, the electric razor grinding away through day old stubble. Already the room smelled like Old Spice and the scent brought back a bundle of useless and unwelcome memories. She remembered the last time she'd touched herself down there: everything had felt cold and dead and lifeless. 'Like this waste of time I call my life,' she said to herself. Once in the kitchen she pulled out a skillet and put it on the range, took eggs from the refrigerator and sausage patties from the freezer and set out what she needed to cook them, and then poured coffee for Mark and Stacy. Brian was still, she thought with the last vestiges of a smile, a little too young for coffee. Too young to do much this early in the morning besides hump his pillow and brag about how well he was doing at football practice. She scrambled two eggs for Stacy and fried three for Mark, finished making Brian's oatmeal, then set out a platter of sausage patties on the table and poured orange juice for the three of them. As they flooded into the kitchen she walked by them silently and walked back up the stairs and into her bedroom. She locked the door and sat down on the edge of her bed; she felt like crying for a few minutes, then walked into the bathroom. She looked at the bottles of Prozac and Xanax in the medicine cabinet and wondered if this was all there would be now. Would there ever be anything more than oblivion to look forward to? Pills and a nap, again and again, then wake up and start it all over again. She took her prescribed dose and lay down on the bed, listened as the kids got into the car with Mark and headed off to school. She hoped sleep would come for her, and take her far, far away. ___________________________ She knew she was far, far away because the ringing in her ears was so out of place. Nothing seemed right. She was on a beach. Sitting, she was sitting; she knew she was sitting because she could feel wet sand under her legs and feet. The sun was hot; a soft breeze was blowing onshore, lifting her hair and filling the air with smells of a salt-laden sea. Mark was standing beside her, his back turned toward her, and he was holding a huge mass of heavy chain. She looked down and saw twisted and rusted links wrapped tightly around her thighs, forcing them tightly together. Why... Mark, why? Why have you done this to me? The ringing was insistent now and she turned, looked over her shoulder at rows of palm trees swaying in the wind. She wanted to walk into the trees, look for the ringing lost there because the sound seemed to be coming from inside the forest that lay beyond. Suddenly she turned back to the sea, remembered something. A huge sailboat sat offshore a few hundred yards away. A man was on deck, looking at her from time to time. She could see him clearly, but his face was almost invisible, like he was not quite a part of her dream. The man was playing a grand piano on the deck, and she looked harder at him now. She could just see strings attached to his arms and hands; some strings were stretched tautly, others dangled loosely, and all vanished in low, gray clouds just overhead. She could see that the man's movements were being controlled by these strings, and she gasped when she saw the man's helplessness. The ringing grew louder still. She heard someone knocking at the door. The door? On a beach? She opened her eyes; she saw her bathroom door was open and felt herself adrift in a hazy, shaded ambivalence. She looked at the old clock on the table by her side just as the knocking started again. It was nine thirty. Daylight, she saw. She swung her feet to the carpet and stood uncertainly, fell back to the bed with practiced ease and let her head spin slowly, let the pressure in her chest subside, then she stood again and walked down the stairs. She could see two policemen on the front porch; one was looking in the window by the door and he saw her, stood back and waited. She reached for the door, still not sure if she was awake yet, or if this was all part of her dream. She opened the door, squinted at the harsh light of day. "Mrs Tomlinson?" One of the policemen said. "Yes. Is something wrong?" "Ma'am, could we come inside," the other officer said. She was waking now; something was indeed wrong. Very wrong. She could feel it all around her now. Something was terribly wrong. She opened the door and let the men in and closed it behind them. She had the impression neighbors were standing across the street looking at her; for some reason this scared her. She led them into the living room, asked if they wanted coffee and what this was all about. "Ma'am, there's been an accident. Is there someone we could call to be here with you?" "An accident?" Tracy Tomlinson said, her eyes wide, her mind now fully alert. "What? Where?" "Perhaps you'd like to sit down, Ma'am..." "No, I want to know what's wrong..." Her voice bit into the air, hysteria rippled through the air around her. "Why are you here? Why?" "Ma'am, does your husband drive a white 2006 Volvo wagon?" "Yes! What? What... are you saying?" "Ma'am, that car was struck by a train this morning at a crossing on Paterson Parkway. We've found three bodies in the car, but there was a fire, and well..." "What? Where are my children?" "Ma'am, we've identified the bodies in the Volvo, and, uh, I'm afraid they've, uh, your children have been, uh, they're gone, Ma'am..." She was aware of time slowing, of the room spinning, growing dark, darker, darker -- the pressure in her chest was crushing, then all was quiet, and pure white. She was surrounded by clouds speeding by and suddenly she felt like she was flying. She was flying into the light, and yet everything was cold now, and very quiet. She felt like she was flying at great speed straight down. The sensation of speed was nauseous, and pain filled her thoughts. 'Why does my chest hurt so much?' she said to herself. 'How very strange this is.' ___________________________ She opened her eyes. There were people all around her; why was everybody dressed in green? Bright light overhead, sharp pain in her left arm, men in funny paper hats with masks over their mouth and nose. A bald man with soft kind eyes behind small round glasses was leaning over, looking at her. "It's alright Tracy. You're going to feel a little sleepy now. Don't fight it, okay? You'll feel better when you wake up." Falling again, further this time. Darker now, darker than before, but she felt warmth all around her, flooding into her. 'How much longer is this going to last?' she said to a reflection of herself down below. As she fell, lost in unknown motion, she became aware of a sound very much like the clatter of heavy chains being hauled across the floor of her dream... ___________________________ She knew she'd been asleep for a long time, yet she knew she was still in her dream. Mark was here. She felt him, and him alone for a while, and she knew he was near because she heard the chains that had shackled her to him for so long. The chains made a horrible music, a forlorn note much like an oboe pierced the fog around her; the melody was painful, discordant, and she longed to find the oboist and correct him. She'd never held an oboe before, let alone played one, but an oboe was hovering in the air before her eyes now and suddenly she realized she knew how to play it. She saw chains materializing in the air all around her, hundreds of them, and each one was carried by Mark. Only there were hundreds of Marks now, all looking at her with pale, lifeless eyes, all holding their chains up, walking towards her. The chains seemed to rattle but she heard music... music everywhere, all around her. She looked at another chain and it was a horn of some sort. She didn't even know the name of the instrument, and she looked at another and another and one by one the chains turned into musical instruments. They advanced on her and held her firmly in her dream just as surely as any chain might have. She was suffocating, trying to pull free but her hands were waited down by chains that writhed like coiling snakes, then as suddenly changed before her eyes into clarinets and piccolos and violins. In her dream she blinked and tried to turn away, but everywhere she looked it was the same. Chains rose, coiled in the air, readied to strike at her and as suddenly shimmered and mutated before her eyes. Before long she was surrounded by hundreds of instruments, each one being played by reflections of herself, and the sky filled with stars. ________________________ Todd Wakeman flipped through the chart and looked over entries for the past 24 hours. Nothing made sense. Chemistries were all in range, surgery to repair the small aneurysm in the base of her brain had gone off without a hitch, but for some reason the woman had never regained consciousness. She had been in a coma for two months now, yet on more than one occasion nurses had heard the woman singing. Well, not exactly singing. She was at first heard humming or singing notes from classical pieces, then launching off into impromptu solo sessions of totally original compositions; nurses began to hear a pattern in these episodes and noted the time and duration. These outbursts happened almost every morning around eight, and lasted anywhere from a few minutes to an hour. Wakeman was in the fourth year of his neurology residency, and he'd neither seen nor heard of anything like this before. It was Something New, and usually when anything like this happened it tended to be a big deal, but the attending professors had looked her over, ordered more tests and scans, and then simply lost interest in her case. Wakeman had no idea what was going on; the episodes seemed to swarm, EEG recording went from almost brain-dead to near total brainstorm in a flash, and as quickly subsided. He had a new group of medical students starting their clinical neurology rotation and he was going to present her case this morning to them, see what he could get out of them. He looked at his watch: 7:30. They would be here soon. He closed the chart and walked out to the nurse's station. ______________________ "Next patient is a Mrs Tomlinson. Tracy, I think. Forty nine year old female suffered a moderate CVA after being told her husband and children were killed in an MVA. Surgery to correct two months ago was non-eventful, but she has never regained consciousness. Mother and a sister visit about once a week now, but no response from the patient. Vitals are good..." Wakeman rattled off the recorded stats and the observations... all but the noted episodes of musical activity. He was about to go over how to assess the patient's neurological status when it began. Gently at first, but insistently, she began to sing the prominent parts of a piece of music that seemed hauntingly familiar to Wakeman; it was the first time he'd ever been around at the onset of one of these episodes, and he still found it shockingly unnerving. Now he turned to look at her. Her eyes remained closed, her body motionless, but her mouth moved precisely, methodically, the notes that came from inside her mind were as precise, methodical; they were, in fact, tonally pure and intact. Wakeman looked at the shocked expressions on the students' faces. He understood completely. One of the third years, a girl named Judith Somerfield, stepped forward with a penlight and opened an eyelid, waved the light in front of her pupils, then the other. "Equal and non-reactive," she said. "But, that's impossible!" The girl took a ball point pen and went the end of the bed; she pulled up the sheet and ran the cap of the pen up the bottom of Tomlinson's foot. There was no reaction. None at all. "I don't get it," the student said. "Is this a gag, a joke?" One of the other students, a teenaged boy with "MacIntyre" embroidered on his pristine lab coat, leaned forward, lifted the sheet covering her arms. "The fingers," MacIntyre said. "They're moving! Playing notes!" "What IS that song?" one of the other students asked. Somerfield looked annoyed, like any dolt ought to know this music. "Romeo and Juliet. Prokofiev. The Death of Juliet! Geesh!" Wakeman smiled; med students seemed ultra-competitive and always standing by with a ready put-down. At least some things never changed. "Has anyone done EEGs when this happens?" Somerfield asked. "Oh, yes, we managed to figure that one out for ourselves," Todd quipped. "Nominal coma until a sudden swarm, then total overwhelming cascades." "Interictal discharges?" "No." "Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy!" MacIntyre chimed in. "MRI and PT are both clear. No spongy tissue observed," Wakeman said, and the boy looked crestfallen. "Hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy?" Somerfield asked hesitantly. "Good guess, but nothing in the surgical record supports that, and neither the paramedics or the cops reported doing CPR or any other breathing anomalies." "Cardiac enzymes?" she asked. Wakeman was brought up short by that one. "Where are you going with this?" he asked. "An undiagnosed cardiac episode?" "Possible, isn't it? If everyone was focused on the CVA maybe they overlooked an infarct. A small, transient..." Wakeman rubbed his chin. "Possible. Where would you look?" "Are the ER records up here?" "No." "First I'd get those, see if anyone did gases and enzymes, if anyone suspected cardiac involvement." "Okay, y'all stay put. I'll go send for them." 'Could it be so simple?' Wakeman said to himself. 'These kids were just coming off a rotation through Cardiology, so of course that's where there head's at, but... could it really be so simple?' It wasn't. ________________________ MacIntyre and Somerfield stood outside Wakeman's office two days later, hesitated, wondered aloud once again if they should tell the head resident about the idea they'd had. Judy had been the first to figure out the key element, and she had talked to Ben MacIntyre after rounds the second morning. "Did you notice? She gets about half way through the piece then stops, retraces her steps and tries again. She gets to that spot and tries a few times to work through it, then falls back into coma." "It's a difficult passage," Ben said. "You know it?" "Of course! What kind of moron do you think I am?!" "A young moron, Bennie. I still can't get used to an eighteen year old third year medical student..." "Screw you," MacIntyre said defensively. "Look, I..." The door opened; Wakeman stood there sleepily, rubbing his eyes. "You two gonna duke it out, or what?" Somerfield and MacIntyre jumped back, startled. "Well?" Judy tried to look more assertive than she felt and just threw her idea out there. "It's about Tomlinson; we've been thinking..." "Now there's a startling idea," Wakeman deadpanned. MacIntyre frowned. "... thinking that, well, she gets through the piece, the Prokofiev, but gets stuck about a quarter of the way in. Like an old vinyl record. Stuck in a groove, almost. She keeps bouncing back to the beginning, starting over and getting to the same part. She did it three times this morning then fell back into coma..." "It's the same music? The same..." "Yes. Prokofiev. The Death of Juliet. From the ballet. That ending is regarded as one of the most evocative, emotionally pure pieces in the classical repertoire. I can't help but wonder why? Why that piece, and why is she stuck there?" "And what if we kind of jump start her?" MacIntyre interrupted. "Somerfield and I were thinking; what if we played long with her? You know, from the beginning. When she gets to that part..." "What? You talking a CD, or what?" Wakeman asked incredulously; he could see where this was going and was startled by the clarity of their proposed intervention. "No sir," Somerfield resumed. "I play the cello; Ben the violin. We'd be set up, ready to go, in the early morning, waiting..." Wakeman was startled by the possibility. If they could get Tomlinson past this stumbling point, what would happen? He rifled through the possibilities, wanted to ask a couple of the department heads, see about getting a video camera set up, call her family... Fascinating possibilities, he said to himself... Just fascinating... ________________________ The dream began again and she withdrew from it, wanted to run from it, wanted to get back to her other music. She resented the interruption, resented anything that took her from her music now. She worked constantly now; instruments she had never known had become her dearest friends, and she composed new pieces all the time in her other dreams. But this one piece kept coming back to her, and always it was the same. The beach, the wet sand against her legs, the unknown cadence of Mark's chains... all of it was the same. Then it came to her as on an errant breeze: she was chained to this music just as surely as she had been chained to Mark. The wind, the trees swaying, the man on the huge sailboat playing the piano...the man...the man... the man in the stars... Why did he always get stuck at the same place in the music? Or was the puppeteer? Did the puppeteer not know the music? Why? Why would the puppeteer not know? But something was different about the dream today. Something about the sound was different. The piano was... no... what? New instruments? The puppet-man turned and looked at her; his smile. There was something different about the instruments! But... She could see the puppet's face now! His eyes were clear, his smile full of mirth, yet proud too. She gasped as the puppet-man nodded his head, turned away, turned back to the piano, and his hands danced over the keyboard smoothly now in an uninterrupted run. Tracy Tomlinson opened her eyes and looked skyward; she cried out and was blinded by the light of ten billion suns... _______________________ Wakeman looked on in awe as Somerfield and MacIntyre read the music and bowed their instruments; he couldn't help being swept away by the simple rendition of the music, by the noble majesty of the moment. He looked at Tomlinson's mother and twin sister as they stood beside the hospital bed, their whole being radiating both the hope and the despair they had felt during the past eight weeks. Woman in Chains Ch. 02 II Todd Wakeman was on the telephone in his office, his fingers drumming away loudly on the desk; both Somerfield and MacIntyre could see he was agitated. He was trying to talk with someone, anyone at the Julliard School after listening to one of the clinical art therapists on the ward. She had heard the music earlier and watched from the corridor, and she too had been completely confused by what she'd seen, but had presented Wakeman with an interesting idea. He was finally connected to one Ina Balinski, one of the school's people in the community relations department, and Wakeman got right to it, explained the Tomlinson case to the woman, what Somerfield and MacIntyre had done that morning, and she was impressed, interested. Then he told her what the art therapist had in mind and she laughed. "I've heard a lot of, well, off the wall stuff, Dr Wakeman, but I think this one tops a very long and distinguished list. When did you want to do this? If we can pull it off, I mean." "As soon as we can, ideally. I feel like we had some kind of breakthrough this morning. I don't want to let that slip away." "Okay, I think I understand. Do you think the family would mind if a TV crew comes along with us?" "I don't know, I'll ask, but I don't see why not. We had a video camera in the room this morning, but that's a long way from a news crew, you know." "Okay, well let me get back to you. Oh, before I forget, where do you think you want to do this?" Wakeman told her and she laughed again, said she'd be back to him in an hour or so. "Well," Somerfield leaned forward, "what did she say?" "Nothing definite," Todd said. "I guess that means maybe." "Cool," MacIntyre added. "Maybe is better than 'Hell no' any day of the week!" "Got that right," Somerfield said. "Any day of the week," Wakeman added. "Any day of the week." 'Now why does that seem important?' he asked himself. ______________________ She drifted amongst fields of stars, and they sang to her. Notes as pure as a sigh, as discordant as death; the stars knew no end to the range of their music. She listened, and she learned, and still the music came to her on never ending streams of relentless starlight. In time she grew exhausted, and still the music came. It occurred to her more than once she was in the presence of a vast, inscrutable teacher. She could feel an odd presence all around her, an infinite, vast presence in the darkness, waiting, watching. She made mistakes and felt palpable fury building among the stars, and then she would find a new chord and the presence settled as a mother rocking her child to sleep. But the music never let up; this teaching, this watching and measuring -- it never stopped. It had not been so long ago that she could not remember being blinded, blinded by an overwhelming burst of music and light, and she had felt herself streaming through fields of stars at impossible speeds. But she had felt something new and different within the light itself, something or someone so familiar the sudden remembrance of brought great pain. Memory pushed inward, tried to push away the music; then she was aware that this someone had once been a part of what she once was. As this dawning realization flooded into consciousness the speeding light tore at everything, rendered memory useless. Sudden pain reached inside this womb of light -- the pain reached out for her, pulled at her, twisted her into impossible shapes, and in a heartbeat the music stopped -- the stars grew silent -- and a vast, infinite darkness settled all around her. For the first time she could remember in this new life she felt the terror of aloneness. She fell within this well of darkness and tumbled mercilessly for what seemed an eternity, but at last a star appeared. A single star shone in the darkness, a single note pierced the infinite loneliness. She focused on the star, focused on the purity of the note and responded with one of her own; another star appeared, and another, and soon she was composing again, dancing in fields of stars, running free among the stars as a child running through a field of bright summer flowers. And yet she knew the time was coming again. The puppet's odd music, and the stopping, and there was nothing she could about it now. She always felt it first as remembrance, as pain, then as an unbroken stream of notes, and eventually as a single, forlorn note falling off into darkness; now -- right now -- the remembering came to her, she knew this beginning and she felt sad, because she knew the man would fail again. She would float incorporeally among the stars, at home in the music she created with them, then there would be... ...surf and warm wind, sand on her thighs, a body wrapped in chain, and always, that distant faceless man playing the same penetrating music that led only back into the night... _________________________ Cindy Newbury looked into the camera, blinked her eyes to clear her contacts. "Sound check," she heard in the bud hidden in her right ear. "This is Cindy Newbury, ABC News, one- two- three -- four." "Alright, good," she heard while she turned again to look out at this fantastic scene. A gymnasium, what amounted to ninety percent of the New York Philharmonic and a handful of violinists from Julliard, a couple of med students with violins too, all arrayed around a hospital bed standing on the middle of the polished maple floor. A cluster of doctors and technicians manned complicated banks of instruments; occasionally they looked down at the comatose woman on the bed and adjusted leads and wires. "It looks like a Shuttle launch down there!" she said into her microphone. "Cindy?" she heard the producer in the ear-bud, "go on and move on down closer now. Let's see if we can catch her face when it starts." "Right, Stu." She looked at her cameraman. "Come on, Paco, let's get to it." "Stop calling me Paco!" Gordon Murphy shot back. "I will when you stop calling me 'Dingbat'!" "Fair enough, Dingbat." They made their way from the stands down onto the floor. She saw the Tomlinson girl's mother, nodded at her as they made their way closer to the bed. She looked at her watch again, feeling nervous as she did. "Okay," the producer said, "let's go live in twenty seconds." Newbury settled into place with Tomlinson's bed just visible over her shoulder. "Live in five-four-three-two-and go!" "Yes, Good Morning, Steve, Jody. We're here this morning at Columbia University, at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, reporting on what appears to be a very unusual treatment that's being tried for the first time... Newbury talked for a half minute; she offered her audience a succinct rundown of the tragedy and its immediate aftermath. The television image cut to scenes of the Tomlinson's home, the mangled Volvo, a mother's tears over fresh flowers on three graves... "Research here over the past few days has revealed that these episodes begin at precisely the time her family's car was struck almost nine weeks ago. It was recently reported to us that the woman has been heard singing notes from Sergei Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet at precisely that time, but for some reason she stops at exactly one point in the music, the same point each time, by the way, then she falls back into the coma. Yesterday students from the medical school accompanied her on the violin and there was an unusual response; when the music stopped the woman dropped back into a complete coma. The thinking is that the intense stimulation of a larger ensemble might evoke a more significant response..." (The camera zoomed out, revealing the Philharmonic arrayed around Tomlinson's bed. The audience heard the morning anchors in their studio muttering about the size of the orchestra and how it had been so rapidly assembled...) "Yes, Jody, that is the New York Philharmonic, a student conductor from The Julliard School is readying them as I speak. She should be..." ______________________ The stars were growing silent now, one by one they shimmered and went out, and she felt herself adrift, bereft. Yet she felt different, altered -- her mind felt ordered and full, devoid of all emotion as she studied her surroundings anew. They had been her teachers. And they had been friends. And yes, she knew now that they had been watching her, measuring her, and she understood. Time was now as time had always been; as time had once measured them so had they measured her. She felt the warmth of the sun on her arms now, the cool sea surge against her feet, yet the chains seemed as tightly bound to her as they ever had. She felt sadness grip her chest again and she looked back to the stars now receding from her. They had turned from her, they were indifferent again, their curiosity at an end. They were now, she knew, quite finished with her. She saw the man on the boat, the piano, all of it was as before... but something was different! The strings! The puppet's strings! They were gone! He began to play and she settled in to listen, and to sing once again the vast, indifferent music of the spheres. _______________________ "Steve! Jody! Something's happening now... yes, Tracy Tomlinson has started to sing, and well, as I'm sure you can tell -- there goes the Philharmonic! What a majestic sound!" ________________________ Wakeman had been watching rows of EEGs and EKGs and so was not too startled when the music began... he had seen Tomlinson's brain swarming, seen the build-up of energy and he knew what was coming. But Wakeman, like Somerfield and MacIntyre and all the others from Tomlinson's tiny hospital room, was unprepared for the awesome scale of the music that now filled the gymnasium. Compared to what had been produced yesterday, the orchestral response went beyond overwhelming; the plaintive lament of the strings was crushing in its willful intensity -- the music that filled the gymnasium now did so with an almost palpably unbearable emotional intensity. And those who could watched as Tomlinson sang as before, willfully, soulfully, and with a purity that stunned even the onlookers from Julliard. Gordon Murphy, the cameraman, walked carefully around Tomlinson's bed recording the scene: Tomlinson's mother and twin sister -- their features lost somewhere between pain and hope; the two medical students -- Somerfield and MacIntyre -- doing their best to play with some of the finest musicians in the world; Wakeman -- lost in the glow of dancing electrons and the ever-evolving music of the brain... Somerfield felt the music building -- not in intensity, because this piece was as far from bombastic intensity as music could be -- but building to that penultimate moment, to that gap in time that had been bridged only once. "Jody, as you can see now, Tracy Tomlinson is singing, her eyes are still closed, yet she is singing, and they are fast approaching that point where yesterday her neurologists say the breakthrough occurred! Gordon, can you move in now, get a close-up of her face?" "I'll try..." _______________________ The music was the same again. She knew every note of it by heart now, yet she remembered how last time the music had been different, how the man on the boat had turned to her, and she had seen his face. Now the music was shatteringly different. The music was full of power, full of celestial resonance, and it was beckoning and compelling her to walk out into the water toward the man on the boat. She tried to stand, felt the full weight of the chains that bound her still and she struggled to break free. She rolled and twisted, fought them off with her hands and feet, and the rusty links bit into her arms and legs. She began to cry, to wail as frustration painfully began dominate all her thoughts... The music faded. The man on the boat turned again and looked at her. His smile was as it had been the last time: warm, welcoming, knowing. Now, the puppet-master's strings were gone and the man stood; he walked to the edge of the boat and beckoned her with his smile to come to him... A link shuddered and cracked, one strand of chain fell away, then another and another. She could stand now, but the music was gone, gone, gone... She turned to the sky again, and everything disappeared into pure light. ________________________ Judith Somerfield saw it first, just as the music drifted past the dividing line. "Dr Wakeman!" she yelled. "Come here!" "What is it? Is it important?" "Wakeman, get over here!" MacIntyre yelled, and Todd walked over, looked at Tomlinson. "She's crying!" "What the fuck!" Wakeman was completely unaware of the ABC cameraman by his side. "You got that right, doc," the cameraman muttered. "You getting this, Murphy?" the producer asked Gordon over the headset. "Yeah -- got it. Newbury, can you get over here?" "Right behind you, Paco." Wakeman was looking at Tomlinson; he saw her body shimmer and turn translucent and golden hued, her form surrounded as if by mist one moment then clear and pure within the span of a single heartbeat, and in that next instant her form turned solid and as human as everyone else in the room. Wakeman had the impression for a moment the body in the bed glowed pure white, like light was being born inside the body and reaching out into the world of man for the first time. Tomlinson sat up in the bed and one by one members of the orchestra fell silent; some stood and looked at the figure in the bed, others turned away from the light and covered their eyes. The light pulsed once and went out; all that remained was Tracy Tomlinson. Wide-eyed, scared, confused, and totally alone, she turned her head and looked around the room. The room was totally silent, the air filled with measurable dread. "You'll pardon me for not standing," Tomlinson said, "but I can't seem to get these chains off my legs." Somerfield and MacIntyre high-fived; Wakeman joined them and soon everyone gathered around Tomlinson; there were a few hugs, yet all the physicians were looking at the woman in the bed as if something more than unexpected had happened. Soon everyone noticed that Tracy and her sister were looking at one another, that a sort of contest of wills had developed and was building in intensity right before there eyes. Wakeman felt what happened next first ... a sudden surge of power, like lightning, he thought, as the surge coursed through the building. Medical monitors flickered, then winked out in a single cascade; Murphy's video-camera flickered and went out, and in the next instant light-bulbs in the ceiling fixtures exploded, sending showers of sparks down on stunned musicians and perplexed physicians. As the room fell into darkness, Tomlinson's mother turned and caught her other daughter as she fainted and fell to the floor. She felt that Becky's body was icy cold, and she yelled for help when she felt patches of ice forming on her daughter's arms. Woman in Chains Ch. 03 III One week after her awakening, Tracy Tomlinson was discharged from the hospital. Todd Wakeman and the two medical students visited with Tracy that morning, rode down with her in the elevator and walked with her to her mother's car. It might have been an emotional parting but for one simple fact: Tracy Tomlinson now appeared devoid of any and all emotion. For the past week the physicians attending her, as well as the medical students on rotation through neurology, had struggled to explain the intricate workings of the brain to Tracy's mother and twin sister, but in truth they were as much in the dark as anyone. They simply couldn't explain the profound absence of emotion with any degree of certainty. In other respects Tracy was neurologically intact: her motor skills were unimpaired, her reasoning ability seemed, if anything, to have improved. She was, for all intents and purposes, unchanged but for two things. The first, the barren emotional landscape Tracy now inhabited, had become apparent when she didn't react to the news of her family's death. Her response was limited to a few rapid blinks of her eyes. Wakeman was watching and he thought it was almost as though she was preoccupied with something else as the news washed over her; Wakeman felt her reaction was like a computer busily churning through an advanced computation and was suddenly interrupted and called upon to process something entirely new, and manifestly different. The computer ignored the request and returned to processing whatever it was that had preoccupied it, and while Tracy was functionally intact -- she could talk, she could relate and react to those around her -- all her interest and conversation was focused now on something unexpected, and startlingly new. Tracy Tomlinson was now completely consumed with music. She had never played an instrument before in her life, had never evinced any interest in music whatsoever beyond listening to The Captain and Tenille or the BeeGees, and that had been thirty years ago. Music had never been, according to her mother and sister, a part of her life in any way. Not ever. Now she was completely obsessed with music. On the day after her awakening - early in the morning, in fact - she had demanded to be taken to a piano. Wakeman and Judy Somerfield had been alone with Tracy in her room and had looked at her when she spoke because, as Wakeman would later recall, there was something odd and -- he felt -- desperate in her demand. There was something inside her mind that wanted to come out, needed be given a voice, an expression, and Wakeman had called Terry Skinner, the clinical art therapist, to ask for advice; Skinner had come to the room, listened to Tracy, and acted. They got a wheelchair and wheeled her to the art therapy room; there was a little upright piano against the back wall and Tracy brightened when she saw it. Wakeman wheeled her to the instrument that morning, thinking she must have been a pianist at one time, but when she approached the instrument it was readily apparent she had never played before. But Judy Somerfield had, and it turned out Somerfield was something a naturally gifted teacher, as well. Tracy hit a few keys, asked what notes they were, and Somerfield sat beside her on the bench and played simple scales for her, showed her how to move her fingers from note to note, chord to chord. After a few minutes Wakeman left Somerfield and Skinner and called for someone with a video camera to come to the room. He called Tracy's mother at home, told her what was happening, went back to the therapy room and pulled up a chair and watched. He'd heard of some instances of musicophilia occurring after prefrontal trauma; generally these cases occurred after electrical events like a lightning strike - and very little personality distortion was observed in these cases beyond lapses in memory. But this was different. He moved closer to the piano and watched. Tracy asked questions; logical, focused questions, not the questions of a damaged brain. Within a half hour she was playing simple ditties, nothing complex, but she was playing them precisely and without any errors. Then: "How do you write down these notes?" she asked Somerfield. Judith began by verbally sketching out the structure of musical notation, then illustrated the concepts on paper. "You were just playing 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star'; this is how you write it out in notes..." Somerfield placed the notes on the paper, then played them one finger at a time while she pointed at the notes on the paper. "See? Easy!" "What about chords?" "You really want to get into this?" "Yes." Somerfield turned to Wakeman; he nodded his encouragement and Judith took the paper and wrote out a couple of chords and showed how individual notes were grouped structurally to form them. "Here, I'll play a chord and you try to write it out." She played a basic C major and Tracy wrote it out accurately and Somerfield looked up at Wakeman, her eyes wide, unbelieving. "That's good, Tracy," Somerfield said. "Why don't you play some on your own for a while? Try to write down the chord. I'll be right back." She nodded at Wakeman, indicated he should meet her outside in the corridor. "What is it?" he said when they were out of the room. "You're kidding, right?" "No? What are y..." "Dr Wakeman, she's like done four or five weeks worth of steady piano lessons in a half hour, but that's only the half of it. She understands music implicitly. I think this is... I don't know... I think she's a savant of some sort. Now. But why now? We need to get a real instructor in here. Have an instructor evaluate her... I don't know? Understanding? We need to understand this change before we can figure out what caused it, right?" Wakeman thought about what Somerfield was saying. Some instances of a priori music skills had been talked about in research derived from hallucinogenic studies, but researchers generally felt the idea was little more than some sort of bogus New Age hooey. If in fact Tomlinson had not had any musical training -- of any sort -- this might represent some kind of . . . what? Metaphysical event? Spiritual? What kind of reawakening was this? And where had Tomlinson "been" while she was "out"? "I'm going to call Julliard. Balinski. And I want you to stay with Tomlinson; as soon as she tires let's get an encephalogram. I'll put it in the chart; you just be ready to move." "Right. But..." "But what?" "What if she doesn't get tired?" _________________________ Wakeman hadn't thought it possible, but Tracy had been playing the piano almost non-stop for a week when he walked her down to the car. She'd exhausted three instructors from Julliard over three days; each concluded before they left they had never seen anything like this before. The last one, a temperamental Russian with a reputation for brilliance had been overwhelmed: "At this rate, inside a month," Podgolskiv said, "she will be the best in the world. This is impossible, I know, but this will be even so." The babbling, flustered man had retreated and vowed to never return. Now she was going home. Balinski had arranged for students and instructors from Julliard to be with her as often as possible, and the students -- who all seemed incredibly interested in her progress -- wanted to spend as much time with her as possible. They had heard the stories Podgolskiv told and they all wanted to be a part of this -- this awakening. And through it all, through all the week's lessons, through all the week's revelations, Tracy had remained as emotionally isolated as a human being could be. It was, Wakeman once said to himself, as if she had grown a heart of ice. Now he helped her into her mother's car, reached across and buckled her seat belt. He brushed against her, almost jumped back when he touched her skin. It was icy cold. So cold it almost hurt to touch. He swallowed hard, blinked, and wondered just who or what Tomlinson was... or what she had become. "Good bye, Tracy. And good luck." She turned toward him, or to his voice, and he shivered when he saw her eyes. They too were cold -- foreign -- and he hardly recognized them as human. Her eyes were, he felt, focused on infinity. She seemed very comfortable out there. ____________________________ By her third week at home, Tomlinson's playing was barely human, no longer explainable. Her mastery of the keyboard was complete, total. Students and instructors left the house each evening with looks of bewildered awe etched on their faces. They told their classmates each day of some new milestone or accomplishment reached, and Podgolskiv nodded knowingly at each new recounting. He was frightened of her. When he could stand it no more, he called Wakeman. He had an idea. Podgolskiv went to see Tomlinson that night; he brought Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 with him; Wakeman and Somerfield arrived a few moments the teacher, and Tracy's mother retreated to make coffee. The old Russian talked with her for a while about the nature of music, about the depth of human understanding conveyed inside the very structure of the notes, and Tomlinson arched an eyebrow, as if she wondered what he meant. "Music is about love, about life, Tracy. The joy and the sorrow of living as we must, as we are constrained to, within this fragile window between our birth and death. Music alone can convey these ideas to any human being regardless of where they come from, regardless of what language they speak. Music is the truest universal language. Emotion is the very soul of music, as emotion is at the very core of what it means to be human." When she did not react to this, he gave her the score. She read the notes for a while, looked at one passage for a while, then looked up at the teacher. "This passage? What does this passage mean?" He had been watching her, he had seen her eyes follow the music to this one crucial point. "It is the apotheosis of heaven, Tracy. It is the soul's ascension. Do you understand?" "Yes." "Would you like me to turn the pages for you? Would you like to try to play it now?" "I do not need the music." She turned and attacked the piano; music of such unbelievable power and majesty poured forth from the piano that it rendered Podgolskiv speechless. He had seen Van Cliburn in Moscow and he had known even then he had been in the presense of immortal genius; but now even that performance seemed hollow and impure compared to what he was hearing. He was for a time caught up in the rapturous beauty of the music until he looked at her; when he saw the truth of Tomlinson's genius in that moment -- when he saw her as she really was -- his awe in an instant turned to sorrow. She was as cold and as empty as space itself. Such technical mastery, such apparent understanding, but in the end her display was simply an illusion. There was no joy in her understanding of the structure, no human emotion connected to her mastery. She was an enigma, certainly, but a hollow one. When she finished she turned to Podgolskiv and looked at him, or at least his way, and he felt the coldness of pure vacuum in her gaze. "You played well, Tracy," Wakeman said. "Did I?" "What does the music say to you, Tracy?" said the teacher. "What does it mean?" "Mean?" "Yes, Tracy. How do you feel when you play?" "What was I supposed to feel?" "It is, perhaps, different for every pianist, Tracy, but when you give yourself over to the music, when you become as one with the notes on the page, many artists feel themselves in the midst of a grand metamorphosis. They feel changed by the experience. Do you feel the same now? The same as you did before you played the piece?" "Yes." Her voice was flat, a vast monotonous plain devoid of what Podgolskiv wanted to call the human. He felt alone, isolated, as he sat next to her. Wakeman leaned forward now: "If you could think of just one word to describe what you felt when you played the music, Tracy, what do you think that word would be?" "Empty...emptiness." "Do you remember any other feelings, Tracy? Since you came back?", he asked. "I feel cold." 'And so do I,' the old man wanted very much to say, but he held himself back. "Cold?" Somerfield asked. "How so? Like the temperature?" "Yes." "Have you felt happy since you came home?" she asked. "Or sadness?" "What?" "Have you felt happiness since you came back? Or sadness?" "I don't know." The old teacher shook inside at the tragedy in her words. He was at a loss. His worldview could not comprehend such genius arising from the void she described, and the sorrow he felt left him shaking inside and feeble-minded, inadequate to the need before him. He wondered what the physicians felt. Would they feel as lost as he did? "Can you tell me what you feel, Tracy?" Wakeman asked. "Physically? Not while playing the music, but right now?" "I feel chains around my legs. I can't get them off." "Chains?" Somerfield said. "Yes." "Where did these chains come from?" "I don't know." "Did someone put them on you?" "I don't know." "Tracy? Does anyone know?" She seemed to hover over plains of indecision when she heard the question. She looked down at the keyboard and played a simple note, then a chord. "Tracy? Who knows?" "Becky." "Your sister? Your sister knows?" "Yes." "Can she take them off? Tracy? Can she help you?" "No. But she will try." "She'll try? What do you mean?" "She will try to take them off." "And? What will happen if she does, Tracy?" "She will die." Wakeman felt a sudden deep chill in the room; he looked at Podgolskiv and Somerfield. They were wide-eyed, staring at Tracy, lost in her words. "Why, Tracy? Why will she die?" Again she looked away, looked inside that place she still held inside. "Tracy? Where are you?" Silence. "Tracy?" She turned, looked at Wakeman, then Somerfield. "She must not try. She will not be allowed." "Allowed? Tracy? By whom?" "She must not. She must not come." "Tracy... you're not making sense to me? Who will not allow this?" "Only he can take them off." "He... who, Tracy?" "Only the man on the boat." "Did the man put the chains on you? Tracy? Who is the man?" "I don't know." "What has he told you? What has he done to you?" "He was a puppet." "A puppet?" "Yes." "Is someone watching him too?" "Yes." "Is someone controlling the puppet now, Tracy?" "No." "Did this other person put the chains on you, Tracy?" "I don't know." "Can you feel the chains right now, Tracy?" "Yes. And I can hear them." "What do they sound like, Tracy? The chains; what do they sound like?" She bent to the piano and began playing. Simple notes, but a pure melancholy filled the room with each new stroke. "This... the music?" the old Russian said. "These are your chains?" "Yes." "Oh my God..." Podgolskiv said. "No. Not God." "Tracy? What?" She looked away then, looked away as if listening to something, or someone. "Tracy?" Wakeman said. "Tracy," Somerfield said now, "what about the man on the boat? What does he do?" "He was playing the piano, but he stopped." "He stopped?" "Yes." "Why?" "Because it is time. We must write now." "Write? Music?" "Yes. A sonata." "A sonata?" Podgolskiv seemed stunned. "Yes." He looked at her again and he recognized something in her. He knew the answer, but he had to ask. "The name of the sonata, Tracy? What is it?" "Starlight. The Starlight Sonata." The old man suddenly felt very tired, very old. "Yes," he said softly. "It must be." Everyone turned and looked at the old man. He was shaking now, and very pale, as if suddenly he was very cold. He had, in fact, never felt so cold... not in all his life. "It has to be," he said slowly, softly. "But why now? Why you?" "Because he is waiting for you," Tracy said as she stood and walked out of the room. Woman in Chains Ch. 04 IV "She sounds psychotic to me," Judith Somerfield said as they stepped out on the front porch. She didn't know what else to think... Todd Wakeman was shook up, confused, and while he couldn't quite put a finger on what had just happened -- he wasn't ready to jump on the psychiatric bandwagon just yet. "I don't know. She seems focused, almost intact, at least when talk centers on music. Emotionally? I'm stumped there. More like a lesion, or a stroke, but there's nothing showing up. Nothing about this case is making a helluva lot of sense right now." He helped Podgolskiv down the steps; they began walking down the sidewalk. "What do you think of this stuff with the music, sir? What did she call it? The Starlight Sonata?" To Wakeman the old Russian seemed troubled and distant; he felt that Podgolskiv was still sharply focused on what Tomlinson had said at the piano. To Wakeman very little of what was said in there had made sense, but he had seen a change come over Podgolskiv near the end. What she said had shook up the old man, had made all too much sense to him, and he couldn't shake the feeling that Podgolskiv had seen something upsetting in there. Though the old man still seemed very preoccupied, there was more to it than that. He had been startled, knocked off balance, and perhaps that was why Podgolskiv seemed reluctant to speak now. Even the way he walked now seemed stilted, unsteady... The old man stopped; he turned and looked up at the sky, at the stars, and a tired smile creased his face. He seemed to give voice to a silent prayer, then he turned toward the physician. "I think perhaps we should have some tea; then we can talk for a while," he said finally. "First, you see, there is a story I must tell you. We need talk no further about these matters until we do so." "Well, God knows I love a mystery," Somerfield said. "Good," Podgolskiv said with a wry smile, "then perhaps one of you would be so kind as to help me find my car." ________________________ It took a while to drive back into the city and find a parking space, but eventually the two medics and the old musician made it to a bar in the Village. The place was off an alley, down a half flight of disreputable stairs; the place was dark and smoky, a jazz quartet played quietly in a far corner. Conversation was muted, and most of the people seated were nursing a coffee or cognac. "Wow!" Somerfield said when she sat down. "This is like the fifties. Way cool." "Oh, I don't know. I understand by 1950 this place had already had its fair share of the spotlight," Podgolskiv said with a smile as he shrugged. "But things thing's fall apart." He shook his head, tried to ward off the melancholy that had dogged him for years now. "Anyway, I have been coming here for years, and there is usually an interesting crowd hanging about." "I'll bet," Wakeman said. "I've been in the city for ten years and I love jazz, and I've never heard of this place." The old man smiled knowingly. This hole-in-the-wall was off map, and deliberately so; it had been since prohibition. It was a hideaway, a forgotten corner for musicians to gather, to relax and talk, or to get lost in -- if only for an evening. "It's a special place," he said, "and if you act like physicians I may get in trouble for bringing you here." He looked at them with a full measure of seriousness, and when he saw that they believed him he smiled, laughed at their easy innocence. Irony, he thought, was so often lost on youth. They ordered drinks, Irish coffee anyway, and sat quietly while each gathered thoughts about them like an old sweater on a cold night. Everything the scientists had taken in at Tomlinson's house now seemed hard to digest, made no sense. And why was music so central to this mystery? "So," Wakeman said when he could stand it no longer. "The Starlight Sonata. What is it?" "Unfinished." "What?" Somerfield said. "You mean it exists!" "Oh, very much so. At least in part." "You've been working on a piece of music called The Starlight Sonata? Does she... is there anyway Tracy could have known that?" "It hardly seems possible. We haven't worked on it in years." "How long... what do you mean, we?" "We? Ah. In this case I mean my brother and I." "And gee," Wakeman moaned, "I guess, well, I suppose this brother, well, he just happens to be your twin?" "Of course." Wakeman stared at the old man; he was dimly aware that his left eye was twitching and he rubbed it. "Is he alive?" "Oh yes. At least I think so." "You think so? Where is he; where does he live?" "On his boat still, if I'm not mistaken." "Well, crapola," Somerfield deadpanned, "this just gets better and better." "You think so?" Podgolskiv said, his voice full of bitterness. "Then you need to listen now. Listen while I tell you a story. Then you tell me if things are better. I will be interested to know what you think. Yes... very interested. Because I have to tell you, I think I am growing a little afraid." ___________________________________ As Tracy Tomlinson retreated further and further from her feelings, as she in effect grew further removed from the recent past, another disturbing yet equally curious metamorphosis was occurring not far away. With each passing day, Becky Parker, Tracy's twin sister, seemed to accrue emotions that were not her own. She was, in fact, drowning in a huge reservoir of despair that had flooded uncontrollably into her life. She had no idea why these emotions had found her, but she certainly knew what they were, and they left her weak and frightened. Those who had known the girls when they were children would not have been so surprised. The link between the two girls had always been strong, but over the past few days, after Tracy's awakening, the torrent of newfound emotion had simply overwhelmed Becky. In their communion, when their eyes had joined, the process had begun. Something happened in those first moments -- when the sisters first saw one another -- something powerful and unsettling and emotionally wrenching for both of the girls. As Tracy withdrew from her emotions in those first startled moments, as she withdrew from the power of the vision that had sustained her for months, Becky had been forced into the vortex of her sister's experience, into the very center of Tracy's denial. She found herself surrounded by her sister's emotions -- and yet, they weren't her sister's emotions at all. And she had remained inside this nonsensical vortex ever since. All the pain Tracy might have felt about the loss of her husband was absorbed by her sister. All a mother's sorrow over the loss of her children rained down on Becky. All the confusion that one might feel upon waking from an extended sleep came to Becky as if the void was now a waking dream, and as she wandered through this bewildering landscape each day the power of the dream swept aside other thoughts and carried her along in the currents of her sister's recent experience. She grew a little quieter each day, more passive -- at least outwardly -- as the force of her sister's passage overwhelmed her. In the first hours of this metamorphosis, Becky was riven by the inexplicable undertow of emotion that came to her; with each passing day she slipped deeper and deeper into the starscapes of her sister's dream. And yet she remained curiously apart from that other world in one crucial way: she remained consciously aware of her "true" physical surroundings. Now, each day she struggled to keep the two apart -- but she was slowly losing this struggle. She tried to function normally, to eat and bathe and care for herself, but with each passing day she found even these simple tasks harder and harder to accomplish. Earlier that evening, when Podgolskiv and Wakeman and Somerfield had come to her sister's house, while Tracy and Podgolskiv sat at the piano and played the Rachmaninoff Concerto, far away, on the far side of the city, Becky walked into her apartment's bathroom and looked into the mirror. What she saw left her breathless with unimaginable happiness. She reached out, placed her hand on the mirror... ________________________ "I first had the dream," Podgolskiv began, "when I was seven. We still lived in Russia, the Soviet Union as it was then, on a small collective in what is today Lithuania. A farm -- we were farmers, of a kind, though my parents had once lived in St Petersburg. We lived, my parents and my brothers and sisters and I, in a two room house, and my father told us we were lucky, even prosperous, to live as we lived. We were Jews, you see. Neither the Germans nor the Russians treated the Jews with great care as you know, but my parents survived, they always survived. I was born a few years after the war, a few days after Israel was reborn, and I mention this only in passing because it was my parent's greatest hope as we grew up that we be allowed to immigrate to Israel. "I remember most sitting by my mother's side when she cleaned dirt from potatoes; while she worked she told us about Israel, about how good it would be once we lived there. I can still see her, you know, cleaning the soil off with a brush, rinsing the potatoes, the numbers tattooed on the inside of her arm. I never knew what those numbers meant. Not for many years." The old Russian sipped from his mug, his eyes as clear as the memories that now held Wakeman and Somerfield so completely. The room seemed very still; to Wakeman it felt like distant spirits had come to join in this telling of the old man's tale. He was struck by the disconcerting idea that Podgolskiv had been summoned to tell this tale and that somehow Tracy and her story of puppets and chains was bound up in this account as well. Wakeman looked at Podgolskiv, at the skin on the man's hands, wondered just what misery those hands had known. Podgolskiv looked down at his hands. "My parent's desire to leave Russia... well, the political powers, yes? They were less than helpful as it turned out. We were transported to Siberia; my father died of cholera our second summer there and after that my mother continued agitating, demanded we all be allowed to immigrate." His voice faltered, withered for a moment, then he summoned his courage and continued. "Well, she disappeared. We never saw her again, and the state took over. But put all that aside for a moment; there is one thing about all this I think important, that you must know, before I can continue. "When we were very small our father would take us out into the fields at night and show us the stars. He had been a teacher at one time, but his views were suspect. Anyway, he became a farmer but he always loved the stars. He would take all of us out on clear nights and show us the constellations, but always on our birthday he would take just my brother and I out. He would find two stars in the sky, and like they were old friends he would point them out to us. "'Those are Arcturus and Spica,' he would tell us, and he told us we could always look up to them on our birthday and they would point the way to Israel. 'Never forget that,' he told us. And I don't think we ever did. At least not at first. "Our Guardians of the State discovered hidden talents in both my brother and myself. We learned to play the piano, to write music, to perform -- and we were like puppets on a string, he and I. But it was a very short string. Perhaps leash would be a better word. "He was the better musician, always. His mastery was complete years before I became a merely accomplished musician. In time he would become famous, world famous..." "Really?" Somerfield interrupted. "I don't recall a Podgolskiv..." "Ah. Perhaps you know him by another name. The name he took after he fled the Soviet Union. Perhaps you've heard of Leonard Berensen?" Wakeman and Somerfield blinked; she was stunned, completely dumbfounded. "He's your brother!?" "Oh yes. If not for him I would have never come to New York, or to Julliard. That was, of course, after the fall of the Soviet Union, after the film scores and the musicals, after the first three symphonies and after he became such a celebrity. He was very good to me, for a time." Podgolskiv sighed as memories teased him, then ever so softly he added: "Before he ran away." Wakeman was wide-eyed, incredulous. "I'm sorry... but the dream? Where does the dream fit into all of this?" "I think perhaps I'll have a whiskey. Would either of you care for one?" They both did, as it turned out. ____________________________ Tracy Tomlinson sat behind the piano again; she was silent now, alone with the music that held her attention so firmly. She leaned over the keyboard, pencil in hand, furiously put notes and chords to paper, paused from time to time to play an unfamiliar chord or work through a difficult passage. She could hardly remember Podgolskiv now, or the conversation she'd had with him earlier that evening. Her mind was filled with music and light, her every waking moment dedicated to listening to the music of the chains she heard so clearly -- and to transferring the sounds she heard into notes on his paper. She rarely stopped to eat or drink, did so only when her mother came into the room and insisted. This body seemed immaterial to her -- it was a transient thing, a medium of expression, and she resented the demands this body placed on her time. Which was why she stood impatiently now and stretched, then walked to the bathroom. When she had finished she stood and started back to the piano -- but she hesitated, stopped short when an impulse passed through her like an electric charge; but the impulse left as suddenly and she felt disjointed, out of phase. She blinked, confused now, but she looked into the mirror by her side, saw her body as it once had been a very long time ago, years before this body came to be. She was resting on the sand -- and was she smiling? -- and suddenly she remembered what it was like to smile. She turned to this most distant reflection of herself and raised her hand to the mirror -- it was almost an act of selfless remembrance; she felt her own skin like an echo on the surface of the glass, felt the joy of his hands all around her once again, and in that moment he was with her again, and happiness washed over her like a sunrise. She began to forget the water and the ice and the chains... His smile, the warmth of his hands on her face, his lips seeking hers -- she remembered it all as she fought off the darkness once again. She longed to hold onto herself as she once had been, to linger within this echo of happiness, but above all she longed to look into his eyes one more time. She felt her body turning but she was no longer aware of where she was. She could not tell if she was in the bathroom of a house on Long Island or on a beach that belonged to his dream, or if her tortured body was being dragged across an icy lake. Nothing made sense, but nothing had in the time that had passed with their parting, but she could smell him now, that smell of sun-warmed skin and salt-kissed air, and she knew he was beside her again. She turned to him now, turned to face him and the unfathomable beauty of his eyes. Her eyes filled with wonder when she saw him, for his eyes danced in the light of ten billion suns... __________________________ Wakeman swirled the whiskey around in the bottom of his glass; he watched as ice mixed with amber and new patterns formed in the chaos. He was unsure whether he felt more like the ice or the whisky. Never had so many of his life's basic assumptions been so directly challenged. What was the word? Anomie? Was that what he felt now? Or was the choice really between hot and cold -- could there be no middle ground? The three of them had spoken of other things for a while, as if by mutual agreement they would take a break from the night's unfinished business. And while Wakeman could feel the questions hovering expectantly over Podgolskiv, he wasn't sure the answers would be painless. Perhaps, he felt now, they hung as the blade of a guillotine over the condemned. Somerfield turned to Wakeman from Podgolskiv; she shrugged, looked lost. Wakeman looked at her, his own loss befuddling, then he turned to the old man: "So, Berensen is your brother? When did he come over to the West?" "The late-70s, I believe. Your Mr Carter was still president. You were how old then, Dr Wakeman?" "I wasn't." "Ah." "You've seen a lot of change in your life, haven't you?" Somerfield asked. "A bit, but less than you might imagine. Music tends to obscure a great deal when it becomes the focus of your life. Other things become, oh -- less relevant, I suppose." "Medicine can be like that, I guess," Somerfield said. "Consuming, I mean." Podgolskiv smiled at the irony. "Perhaps so. I used to see such clarity in music. Now I find only questions, and the answers no longer seem as important to me as they once did. Isn't that -- silly?" "I don't think so," she said earnestly. "No, not at all. That's what science is all about; questions lead to a conclusion, but the conclusion all too often leads to other questions. The answer that seemed so important is just a point along the way; it soon fades as the new concept replaces the old." Podgolskiv nodded but did not look up from his drink while Somerfield spoke. He tilted his glass, looked down into the amber like he was looking at the very meaning of life -- and was not at all happy with what he'd found. He looked at the age spots on his hand, his yellowed fingernails, and objectively he knew they were his, but still, they looked so foreign, so -- alien. "The worst thing about growing old," he said after a while, "is that it's in color." "What?" Wakeman said, startled. "When I was little, back on the collective -- in Lithuania, the only photographs I knew were of old people, and they were always in black and white. I used to think that in the olden days life must have been so; that everything and everyone in the time before I was born was black and white. In time I began to think that only older people were black and white, that only the young could be -- colorful. In those old photographs people looked so natural in black and white, so pure. Color has done nothing but make such things real." Podgolskiv looked up from his glass, looked at Wakeman, and he smiled. "Is that so bad?" Wakeman asked. Podgolskiv shrugged. "As long as one does not confuse what is real for the truth. Truth is not so easy to find." The old man took a deep breath, rubbed his eyes. He had decided to talk now: "The dream came to us in deepest winter..." "Us?" Wakeman interrupted. "Yes, to Lev and myself. The same night. A woman, on a beach. In chains; the woman was wrapped in chain, bleeding from them, as a matter of fact. The dream, or dreams, seemed to have everything in common, but after Lev and I discovered what had happened, when we compared notes, so to speak, one key difference emerged. The woman in my dream was an older woman; the woman in Lev's dream was very young. No older than we were then." "What did the two of you make of that?" Somerfield asked. Podgolskiv looked at the girl. "The truth has not been so easy to find, young lady. At least not until tonight." He wondered how far he could go, how much of this retelling they would believe. He decided to tell them as much as he could. "One fact emerged that night: both women said much the same to us in our dream. Not exactly the same thing, but close enough. Or so we thought. The young girl in Lev's dream said that she had come to help him begin something -- music. The old woman in my dream told me she had come to help us finish what we had begun. 'Because it is time,' she said." "Isn't that what Tomlinson said?" Somerfield asked, suddenly alert. Woman in Chains Ch. 04 "Yes. Just exactly," Wakeman said. "We must write now, because it is time." "And 'he is waiting for you'; didn't she say that too?" "Yes, yes..." Podgolskiv looked at the two scientists and smiled. "Did either of them mention the sonata?" Wakeman asked. "The Starlight Sonata?" Somerfield seemed almost mesmerized at the thought. "Yes, yes," Podgolskiv said, now both irritated and amused. "But that is not so important. Now we must jump ahead a few years. To Siberia. To the school, the music school. As I said, Lev was always the more talented of us, but I think only he knew that in the beginning. Everything was always so clear to him, came so easily to him. Our teachers adored him; soon all the musicians felt a special bond with him. There were many musicians in Siberia, but I don't suppose they teach that in school these days. Not any more. Artists tend to be somewhat radical in their worldview, and brilliant musicians by the score found themselves playing for the most unusual orchestras. Prison orchestras, by and large, but very good; as good as any in the world. "One day two new students 'joined' our school, and I hope you will appreciate the full irony of the word I use. 'Joined' is hardly a term I would choose, but nothing else seems to fit. Two girls. Sisters. Twin sisters. Their parents were very radical, great troublemakers for the regime, but very famous. It was about the time of the trouble in Cuba, with the missiles and Kennedy. 'The girls were identical twins, unlike Lev and I. They were almost impossible to tell apart. They kept to themselves at first, but like everyone else both soon fell in love with my brother. It was Tina, Valentina Lenova, who first mentioned to him that he would one day write a great symphony. And here I trust you will bear with me a while longer, for she told him that she had dreamed long ago of meeting him, of working with him on this music... "What music?" Lev asked her. "The Starlight Sonata." Tina said. "It will be your masterpiece." "Wait a minute, wait a minute!" Wakeman said, clearly exasperated. "Are you saying that this girl, this young girl, was the girl from Leonard -- uh -- Lev's dream?" "Oh, yes. That should be obvious." "Then how does Tomlinson fit into all this?" Somerfield asked, clearly shaken. "Is she old enough to be one of the girls?" "No, no," the old man said. His eyes were really bothering him now, and he seemed very tired to Wakeman. "It is not possible that it is her, but..." Podgolskiv's voice trailed off. "But what?" Wakeman said. "You acted like you recognized something in there tonight. Did you? What did you see?" "It was her eyes, you see," Podgolskiv said. "Something in her eyes. I have seen it before. I recognized it..." "Who, what? Valentina?" "No, no. Not Tina." "Then who?" "Well, you see, that is the trouble. We knew the girls for a few years, and in time Lev and Tina became very close. Sara, her sister, well, in time she and I became close. But... I do not know what the truth here is. I can only tell you what I saw tonight. I saw in Mrs Tomlinson something I never expected to see again. I saw my Sara's eyes, and in her eyes I saw Tina's. Like the one's was reflected in the others. It was like they were reaching out for one another, trying to touch one another. All inside Mrs Tomlinson's eyes." "You said there was no way that Tracy could be either one of these girls you knew," Wakeman said. "But isn't it possible that they immigrated? Maybe they came to America, maybe you didn't know..." "No, Dr Wakeman, it is not possible." "But how can you be so sure?" "Perhaps because the authorities loved my brother so -- we escaped the same fate. I do not know. But the girls' parents did not grow quiet; they became anarchists, really. Quite violent. To teach all the musicians a lesson one day they took the girls mother and father and shot them in the head before all of us. Then they punched holes in the ice, the ice that covered the lake. They took the girls out there and dumped them in." "Oh my God," Somerfield said. "Perhaps he was there that day, Miss Somerfield, but I doubt it. You see, whoever was there that day had a vile sense of the ironic. Before the girls were drowned, you understand, their bodies were wrapped in chain." Wakeman felt an icy hand grip his heart; he shivered, turned away. Somerfield began to cry. "So there you have it," Podgolskiv said. "Once upon a time we, my brother and I, we loved, and that love was taken away, ripped from our arms, and all we could do was watch as it disappeared beneath the water." "But tonight? What..." "Tonight, Dr Wakeman? Tonight? Why, isn't it obvious? Remember what I said about what is real, and what is the truth? Tonight they came back, Dr Wakeman. Tina and Sara have returned. Now you tell me what is real, and what is true, and then we will go have a nice laugh together." * So ends Part One of The Starlight Sonata Part Two begins with "The Stones of Years" Woman in Chains He checked the leads feeding the EEG, watched Tomlinson's brain waves trace wild lines across the screen. He picked up the stream of graph paper that slipped out the side of the machine, looked at the gathering swarm of neurological activity. Whatever it was, whatever was happening, he saw it was huge, overwhelmingly so. He had never seen anything like it before, not even in healthy patients. He could tell the decisive moment was fast approaching without even looking at Tomlinson. "She's in REM sleep now." He said quietly as he looked up. "Look at her eyes!" Tomlinson's eyes were still closed but they were moving around rapidly under the eyelids. This had not happened before and Wakeman's sense of expectation built even more. Her hands began to move; slowly at first, but more rapidly as the decisive moment approached. Somerfield concentrated on the music, yet she was torn between two contradictory impulses. She wanted to watch Tomlinson, watch her reaction to the music, but she wanted to be as technically perfect as she had once been. And the two of them alone, she knew, would never do this music justice. MacIntyre felt the tension in the room increasing with each note of the music, the anticipation building ever higher as the music neared the anticipated breakdown point. Would she, could she make the transition? He held his old violin tightly with his chin; the bow in his right hand danced across the strings as if possessed, leaving little puffs of rosin on the down-strokes. He was beginning to sweat... Tomlinson's voice was crystal clear and keeping perfect time to the music -- but as the moment approached it wavered, broke, and Wakeman hovered on the edge of a howling frustration, felt like screaming as helplessness tore through him. And then the moment was upon them. Somerfield and MacIntyre played steadily through the passage. Tomlinson's voice held, broke again and held. Wakeman looked at the EEG; all activity was off the scales, like the woman was in total sensory overload. It was impossible that anyone could remain focused on anything, he thought, let alone sing or carry a tune. He turned away from the machine, looked down at her... "Her eyes!" he said in an excited whisper. "They're opening!" Somerfield hesitated, looked away from the music. "No, no! Keep playing!" MacIntyre pleaded, and Somerfield returned to the music without missing a note. "Nurse, put some saline on a four by four, wipe her eyes please," Wakeman said, and one of the duty nurses bent to the task, gently wiped Tomlinson's eyes. The final, powerful descending notes -- the long sigh of death and release -- crossed time and space, the room was full of strings and one human voice united in the common language of her song, and remained so until the song ended. Wakeman looked at Tomlinson. Her eyes opened a bit, the EEG was meaningless now -- all readings nonsensical -- and Wakeman was aware everyone in the room was willing her on. The people and the music had united as one... They all rose as if on a wave and as suddenly broke and fell. Tomlinson's lids just barely parted in that moment, and Wakeman gasped at the almost immeasurable power he saw in the woman's eyes; as suddenly Tomlinson's lids closed and the EEG fell back into an almost total flatline. "Well Goddamn it all to Hell!" he howled in his West Texas draw as he stomped out of the room. "She opened her eyes!" Tomlinson's mother cried. "Did you see that, Becky? My baby! My baby girl opened her eyes!" Becky and Tracy had always been close; too close, some said. There was, it had been commented upon more than once, an unnatural connection between the two of them. But now, as Becky looked into her sister's eyes she felt a boundless, raging terror boiling inside her sister that left her feeling desolate and alone... and empathically terrified. As she fell back from impossible visions of warped stars that filled her mind, her body suddenly felt possessed by music -- illimitable, endless music that gripped her heart in cold fury.