The Old Man and the Music

By Paul Mirabile

 

The reports simply identified him as the old man. Was he that old ? No one risked a clear answer. Everyone, on the other hand, who had come into contact with him, affirmed that he was the most kindly of human beings, and the banality of his appearance -dressed all in white- corresponded perfectly to the commonplace gesture that he offered graciously to each and every person who, as if out of the blue, stood face to face with him.

A rapid handshake. A sunny smile. Deep set eyes. A flash of brilliance from his white suit and blue silken shirt. A warm glow that flowed from his outstretched hand which permeated the palm, rose slowly up the arm, to the shoulder then throughout the entire body. And as this warm glow penetrated each and every bodily organ and brain cell, the old man would disappear as suddenly as he had appeared, melting into a crowded street, train station, bus, tramway, shopping centre …

After the memorable handshake, it occurred to the recipients of this friendly and gratuitous gesture that their physical and mental conditions underwent very unexplainable transformations ; unsettling sensations that erred erratically throughout the members of their body and brain like some injected serum.

At first, they suffered flushes of heat streaming from the palm to the head. Not unbearable, but throbbing, vibrating like the tremors of a fever about to break ; tremors which aroused reminiscences of their early childhood : sad, forlorn, friendless reminiscences.

They saw themselves sitting in lonely abandonment, surrounded by choking, stuffy air, deserted by parents and friends, left, evidently, to their unforeseeable fates. Dark and frightful reminiscences that brought tears to their eyes, whilst their palms and cheeks glowed scarlet red.

 

However, these very disturbing sensations and ambiguous scenes evaporated, leaving a dull, empty feeling both in the body and mind, followed gradually by distant musical notes, low but steadily rising in pitch ; rising and falling in echoless intonations.

These sharp notes were sounded by a brass instrument, a trumpet, they presumed. The notes rose higher and higher as did their spirits. During an incalculable period of time, the depression gradually vanished, and in its stead rushes of the wildest joy and gaiety caused them to forget those hours or days of dejection and bleak dispiritedness.

 

As more and more hand-shaken individuals discussed their uncanny experiences, reports were filed to doctors and the police about this hand-shaking old man. It became evident that the troubled effects of a tortured infancy and agonized adolescence, only then to transport the person into the realms of mental and corporal joyous crescendos by the mere toot of a trumpet, confounded both the police and the medical authorities.

The initial depressive effect might have lasted a few days, yet all the people examined affirmed that the physical and mental glow eventually enhaloed them, so to speak, in swirls of tooted rapture, prompting them to sing or dance wherever they might have been : in the streets, at home, in their places of employment.

 

As time passed, the reports became more vivid. Da capo, the recipients explained as best they could, that the handshake drove the memory sadly back into a dull, lifeless torpor, prompting deeply-layered claustrophobic scenes of mournful gloominess, which plunged them headlong into states of utter disenchantment.

Then the tooting tempo ascended like in a dream. Lightly it ascended, ascending … ascending, choking those occluded scenes in intonated scores of hopes, love and merrymaking. Louder and louder the trumpet blared, followed by other instruments of the euphonium family and several string and percussion instruments until the recipient of the handshake felt completely overwhelmed by a bombastic symphony of wanton happiness !

 

‘Once reaching this high pitch of joy, the forte declined, glissando back to those initial softly blown notes of the solitary trumpet. Notes that brought tears of unimaginable joy. A joy that the bearers of the glow spread far and wide, not by way of a handshake, but by the enthusiasm of their unexpected experience to everyone who came into contact with them: espouses, friends, colleagues … even strangers. So stated the reports.

 

The recipients of the old man's handshake found themselves, hence, singing and dancing anywhere they could find a partner, unbelievable though it may sound. They danced in unbounded joy, a joy that became contagious, streets filling with more and more dancers, singers, people playing musical instruments, especially trumpets.

 

How did all this come about ? Who was this hand-shaking old man by whose touch of the palm caused people to 'lose their senses', suffer a bout of depression, only to burst into scores of wild, musical abandonment ? Could a simple handshake produce such extravagant, abnormal behavior?

Journalists set out to find the roaming hand-shaker, eager to question this weird 'bugger', trailing after police and detectives who had been hunting him down for months, alas with no luck. How long would the chase go on ? How long would this nonsense tarry ? He was no where to be found ! It were as if a ghost appeared out of a cloud of mist, materializing before his chosen 'hand', then vanishing within the same misty cloud.

 

And as journalists and the appointed authorities scoured the country for him, the number of hand-shaken people grew and grew into myriads. The bearers of the glow had now poured beyond the borders of England, the magic glow burning brightly in France, Holland, Germany … all of Europe. Even beyond into Russia and North Africa … the Near and Middle East …

All the reports that flooded the desks of editors, detectives and police agents corroborated the phenomenon : an old man, dressed in silken white, a sunny smile, warm eyes out of which flowed a soft, mellow glow … Yes, the reports became much clearer : a glow of almost unperceivable rising and falling trumpet notes. An Illusion ? A collective aural fantasy ?

Reality should not be condoned by an individual's witnessing nor by a crowd's corroborated testimony. Yet, the cause and effect that this old man's handshake had created, testified to the reality of the ensuing circumstances. Wanton joy and gaiety spread like wildfire …

 

The readers of these reports could not refute their facts : the hooted notes began so timidly, so sullenly, then reverberated louder and louder, supported by dozens of trombones, tubas and other horns, reaching a ritornello of such abysmal sorrow, only to rise and erupt, like a volcano, into mad trebles of indescribable jubilation …

 

And so, this uncanny movement continued on and on like notes resounding on staves, rising here, falling there, reaching bombastic crescendos here, inaudible decrescendos there. Yet, the herald or harbinger of such jubilant, wandering merriment remained an enigma, a mystery to everyone, including the recipients of his glowing handshake. In fact, they even began to question the sanity of their unchecked acts of exuberance !

Was it possible for them to be so caring, so benevolent to their fellow creatures ? A mere handshake and single notes of a trumpet had metamorphized them into an unfathomable grieving loneliness, then without any sign or omen, besides the notes themselves, raised them into scores and scores of reckless joys, impossible to brook. A joy diffused far and wide to foreign lands of long-time enemies, of allies, of ignored cultures … and without their shaking hands to boot ...

 

Had the whole world gone mad ? Mad with the hoots of a hundred horns ? The psychologists' reports startled both the medical and political world : the recipients of the old man's handshake had first suffered from traumas and other emotional childhood shocks, thus substantiating the initial descent into deep depression before the contrapuntic emergence by a suave arrangement of trumpet notes, as if the trumpet acted like some conducive rhythm that led them out of their distant discordant discords into a new scale of euphoria, or as some reports noted, euphony. Indeed, the musical accompaniment of this 'therapy' had no rational explanation.

 

Music will indeed create various moods in people ; yet, diffuse vastly different moods according to the psychological state of the person. In all the thousands and thousands of cases observed and reported, however, an identical metamorphic effect occurred. Impossible some objected, yet medically verified. Needless to say, the psychologists were in a quandary …

The cases multiplied ten-fold … a hundred-fold … a million-fold ! Gay rejoicing spread throughout Central Asia into China, India, Mongolia down to South-East Asia. Those who experienced the glowing, resonate handshake began to take up the trumpet in schools and conservatories. No other instrument deemed favorable in their eyes.

But why the trumpet, queried psychologists and sociologists ? Why da capo the lone, stirring, sorrowful notes which gradually ascended to a grand finale ? The whole texture of the rhythm baffled even musicians. Oddly enough, when the people examined were asked to hum or whistle the tune the majority were quite unable to do so, although it raced through their mind’s day and night to such an extent that after a few months of trumpet lessons, it was possible for them to reproduce it with amazing accuracy. Others managed to hum or sing the adagio tempo easily, their trebled voices reaching resounding brazen pitches equal to an oratorio.

Curious enough, these individuals drove themselves into a frenzy of uncontrollable exultation, even beatitude as the timbre of their voices climbed higher and higher on the chromatic scale. The exultation appeared to specialists as a dangerous trend in the pending world-wide musical nightmare. The old man had to be stopped before the entire planet went merrymakingly mad … And as we all know, there is nothing more contagious than madness or delirium ...

 

Doctors began to question why the old man, according to the reports, never spoke a word. Not one person ever mentioned the tone of his voice, his tenor of his vocabulary, accent or pronunciation. When asked about his origins everyone shrugged their shoulders ; how could anyone adjudge a person whose mute smile and voiceless gaze translated the language of affection and fraternity to all and sundry ? All they could acknowledge was that the old man had a comely face. The examiners threw up their hands in exasperation whilst the examined tooted a tune on an imaginary trumpet ...

 

As time went by it occurred to experts and specialists that only the hands shaken by the old man produced the euphoric effects. No other hand, albeit shaken by his, had the power to transmit the desirable effect. This posed a conundrum. How was it possible that one outstretched hand could shake millions and millions of hands ?

The whole affair appeared absolutely preposterous. But the proof was there for all to see : the scenes of jubilation, hilarity and joyous abandon were certainly not a mere Illusion. Or could it all be a gigantic conspiracy ? A world-wide collusion to instill joy and laughter into each and every house and heart, creating political and economic turmoil ?

 

But if it were a vast Illusion, how could it ever be a globalized conspiracy ? Furthermore, the heads of States sat in utter despondency in their offices : Why hadn't their hands been shaken ? Were their authoritative hands unworthy of the glowing grasp ? They too yearned to sing and dance in the streets … wind their horns. Alas, there they sat glumly, stung to the quick, bottled up in their dreary offices, fretting alone in frightful expectancy of something irrevocably catastrophic, confronted by this unheard-of phenomenon …

 

Prime ministers, presidents, kings and queens criticized the global folly, tritely reminding their frolicking, happy-go-lucky citizens or subjects that an excess of joy will soon bring weeping. No one paid attention to their resonateless words, drowned out by the myriad brass orchestras on every street corner and park, invading the radio and television stations, the millions of ritornellos whirling and swirling in towns, villages and hamlets of all nations.

Several wandering musicians who lent an ear to the desperate cries of their state leaders responded: « If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise ... »

 

They tooted high above the reverberating rampage. The adage sounded familiar, but no one troubled themselves to ferret out its authorship. It was soon reported that two or three European nations had sent their intelligence services to weed out this hand-shaking maniac. He had to be stopped at all costs ! In the United States, the F.B.I had been tracking him for months ; no trace was found of him. Besides, how was it that he had enough money to cross oceans and continents ? Was he rich or helped by an invisible hand ? All sorts of wild stories circulated in and out of the toneless offices of High Authority ...

 

Honestly, how many old men populate the planet ? Moreover, the reports of his physical appearance and dress began to diverge considerably. At first, they stated that he had short hair, dressed in a white suit and a blue silken shirt.

His shoes, too, were a velvet white. But recently the reports became more and more evasive, bizarre, describing him as a short fellow, bald, robed in a flowing blue gown with the brim of a red fez brushing thick bushy eyebrows. Others swore that he was dwarfish in size, parading in a shalwar that floated on him, sporting a skull-cap and brandishing a plastic toy trumpet in his pudgy hand.

Nondescript accounts of him at first evolved into fantastic, detailed dress circle inventories: now he was skinny, a pinched pale face framed in long green hair, wearing a pair of white tights and a short-sleeve blouse. Now many claimed that he appeared in a shiny black velvet vest with equally shiny black trousers whose sheen matched the brilliance of his winning smile. Now hundreds pretended that he stood before them in a blue bathrobe, long green streaky hair stirring in the wind.

Now he strode up to them barefoot, in shorts, smoking a long cigar. And now thousands asserted that he was a puckish-looking chap who posed before them in black sheer net stockings, a tight-fitting pleaded kilt that hugged his hips and a top hat ! What could the authorities make of all that ? The witnessed reports became so ridiculous that police and detectives resolved that the whole world had gone completely daft ...

 

Worse still, these reports were surreptitiously leaked to the press, filling the first pages of all major newspapers with their extravagant accounts. Some writers who disinclined their names or wrote under a pen name began to publish librettos about the wandering old man, striking another contrapuntic chord in the already cacophonic recital.

 

The uncanny absence of the old man afforded the press and publishers all the more lust to enlarge his presence, broaden his nomadic wanderings, ennoble his musical Odessey. His traceless steps transformed into scores of literatures. His invisibility transfigured into the portrait of a seer, a sage … a prophet ! The glowing handshake transfused a burning desire to hasten Judgement Day, a day in which all the trumpets of the Heavens would wind their salivating staves …

Meanwhile streams of musicians and spectators poured out of music halls and theatres into the wide avenues of the capitals of the world led by small groups of trumpeters, trombone players and drummers drumming on their marching snare drums. Avenues and side-streets resounded in a vibrant musical babel.

People who observed these billowing, boisterous, dancing crowds from their balconies above, cheered and danced too. The police were at loggerheads as what action to take. It was even stated that many of them joined the sonorous swarms … Were they all convinced of that coming Day ?

 

So as the trumpets and other brazen bugles blared away in blatant jubilation, the 'infected' populations of the world ; that is, those who had been blessed by the old man's handshake, came to realize that the legend which had followed in the wake of his vanishing footfalls was one that the whole world overtly and rejoicingly shared. For prior to this world-wide legend, each nation proudly raised the banner of his or her own national legend as if it were a battle pennant, unfurled high upon the masthead of arrogant nationalism.

Now, however, this legend, resounding of the old man's benevolent, wordless gesture, composed of millions and millions of intoned trumpeted voices, orchestrated in one symphonic harmony, had truly vaunted before the disbelieving eyes and ears of Authority the reality of a symphonic sympathy, a melodious euphony in the form of a recital of fraternal unification.

 

One publisher in Paris who sulking confided that he had never had his hand shaken by the old poppet confessed that this wanton joy, merrymaking and jolliness would surely make a wonderful fairy-tale to be written and published.

 

Whether he fulfilled this noble intention I cannot say. But I can assure my readers that it has become a cheerful fire-side tale, and I am sure it would make a lovely written story for all readers, even those who have never experienced the glowing warmth of the 'old poppet's' hand ...

 

Paul Mirabile from France is a retired professor of philology. Paul has published academic works centred on philology, History, pedagogy and religion, and stories of the travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years teaching and studying the mediaeval epic tales of Turkey, Armenia, India, China and Russia.