BEYOND THE SEA

He said, "I've had two dreams about Mozart this month. The first one was right after our last restaurant gig. You remember. I botched that passage. I could hear Father's eyes roll up in their sockets all the way across the room. Well, in this dream I was some kind of forensic archeologist crossed with a musicologist, and I had this crazy assignment. I was supposed to exhume the remains of some eighteenth-century aristocrat's wife. This aristocrat had commissioned Mozart himself to compose an original piece of music in her honor. Mozart composed the piece as ordered, but then, being the kind of fellow he was, he dedicated it to the lady's foot, which he thought was really beautiful. It upset the husband so much, he not only fired Mozart but also destroyed the only copy of the composition. Where I came in was, I had to dig the lady up, examine her foot bones, and from that somehow reconstruct this lost piece of Mozart music."

A smile flickered at the corners of Mother's mouth. "Perhaps it was your subconscious telling you you're on a mission from Mozart. That you should practice harder so you won't botch more passages."

"No, I don't think so. I knew in the dream I wasn't up to the job. I woke up in a panic. It was like I'd had an anxiety attack in my sleep. It wasn't a good dream. I think it was my subconscious telling me I know I just don't have it in me to be a great musician."

"Good or bad, dreams have only as much power over us as we give them," and for a moment it seemed to him that, without changing position in the least, she turned completely away from him and gazed at something far off. He almost did not want to say any more, but then she returned from wherever she had gone and looked at him. "You said there were two dreams."

"The second dream was early this week. In it -- did you know Mozart actually died from exposure while exploring the American southwest? That his companions buried him in a cave? Nobody knows where the cave is. I learned this in the dream from Artie Shaw. The bandleader."

"I know who Artie Shaw was."

"Only he wasn't a bandleader any more. He was teaching a course in literature right here at the university. After class, he and I and one or two other people -- maybe one of them was Doctor Weiss -- we all piled into this old car and went looking for Mozart's final resting place."

"Interesting. And did you find it?"

"No. All that happened was I missed a lot of classes and a couple of gigs and -- there was a lot of yelling and screaming after that."

"Mozart and Artie Shaw. Still. You picked another clarinetist to bum around with in dreamland."

"No, this was after he'd stopped playing. Shaw walked away from music when he felt it was time to go do other things. He was a big success as a bandleader, but he'd had enough, and he had other dreams. I'm not a success, Mother, but I've had enough, too. And I have other dreams."

"Not everyone's so lucky as to have more than one dream. Zack, you have the makings of a decent clarinetist."

"Decent. Solo or ensemble?"

"You have the capacity for large breaths," she said coolly. "Your tonguing is good. It is no mean thing to be a good ensemble musician."

Zack shook his head. "That's not much of an inducement. What we do is provide aural wallpaper at brunches and gallery openings. Nobody'd notice us at all unless we suddenly stopped playing in the middle of something. Maybe not even then. A hologram could do what we do, and you could edit out the fluffs."

"Better not let your father hear you say that."

"He doesn't hear anything he doesn't want to hear unless you get right up close to him and shout in his face. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy playing when I'm playing just to be playing. Aural wallpaper or not. I could go on enjoying that if only Father wasn't so determined to be a musical genius and have kids who're virtuosos."

"Zack, it's given only to two or three people in every hundred million to be geniuses. I've never met a genius. Not even your father. But I've known many more or less good musicians. Notice I do not say gifted. Good musicians, whether they're merely good or very good, are those people who can concentrate on their music to the exclusion of everything else. It's the price they have to pay to be good."

"But I don't want to be so good at just one thing that I'm no good at anything else. I love music, but I love geology, too. Like Granddad. He believed everyone needs art and science." How old had he been -- six? seven? -- the first time he had visited the seashore with his family? The sight, the idea, of such an immensity of water had paralyzed him with terror until his grandfather handed him a conch shell and told him to hold it to his ear; he had virtually forgotten to breathe as he stood listening to the ghostly echo, the ocean's music. All life came from the sea, Granddad had then told him, and as the old man spoke of the vastness of geologic time and the beginnings of life he stretched his hand indefinitely seaward, so that ever after Zack's concept of the past had been inextricably linked to the ocean and its unseen further shores. The eras and periods and epochs existed somehow simultaneously within and beyond the sea.

"About this prehistoric expedition," his mother said. "I'm sure you'd have to get all the way through to post-grad before anybody would even consider taking you along on any expedition. And there's no guarantee anybody would ever take you along."

"I know all that. But I want to try for it."

"Is it what you really want? Are you positive?"

"I believe I can do it. I believe it'll be worth all the work and waiting."

"You realize scientists make even less money than good ensemble musicians."

"Mother, it's -- it's the greatest adventure anyone could ever have! Think of it!"

"Oh, God, I am. I'm thinking my only son wants to joyride in a time machine. I'm thinking he's going to get eaten by some prehistoric monster."

"There're no monsters there. Just shellfish and water bugs. Not even any stinging or biting insects." He knew better than to mention the Paleozoic arthropods likely to be encountered. But then he did say, "Even if we don't find anything pleasant, at least we'll find something new."

"You should be trying especially hard right now to make it all sound as safe as a high-school band trip."

"It'd just be field work. I was just repeating something Doctor Weiss said."

"You're awfully taken with Doctor Weiss all of a sudden. Until today, I'm not sure I ever heard you say her name. Is she pretty as well as smart?"

His neck and cheeks smoldered. "She must be in her thirties."

"That's not what I asked, but never mind."

"If Granddad had this chance, he'd've gone in a hot second."

"Yes," Mother said, "if he'd had the chance. Did you know he played in a jazz group when he was young?"

"Yes."

She appeared not to have heard. "He played piano and saxophone. The instruments in greatest favor, he used to say, among whorehouse musicians." Zack nodded mechanically. He knew the whole story, all the jokes, the titles of every song in Granddad's repertoire, which had run heavily to contemporary selections, "She Had Different Faces," "Joto Moto," but also included many old standards, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," "Something," "Moonglow." He had taught them to his daughter, who had taught them to her son, who had learned from both of them that all the best old songs were full of loss and yearning for that which was or that which may be. No one could write songs like that any more because no one had to give up anything or wait for anything any more. Yearning and instant gratification were mutually exclusive....