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Updated: May 9, 2025
A loud thump on the studio door and a Morse dot and dash announcement of identity on the bell just as he had pieced a pack of cards together, filled him with intense resentment. "Max Kreiling!" he said with a sniff. And a little later: "Caesare!" He thought perhaps, feeling as he did in a mood for murder, he wouldn't let them in, abuse the door panel and the bell as they would.
"Now, Kenny," commanded Kreiling, nibbling cheese and rye bread, "play." Kenny sullenly obeyed. After the first effort, something rebellious touched his sullen mood to fire and he played fragments of the Second Rhapsodic with madness in his touch. Sid, aware of it, stared in round-eyed apprehension at his back. "He's just in the mood again for rocketing," he decided.
"There is love and love," said Max Kreiling, "and to be in love is torture and a thing of self, but when the big splendid tenderness comes after the storm of self and craving, the tenderness that knows more of giving than of demanding, it comes to stay. But it's not the love of barbarity like Finn's. It's an evolution." "Ask Kenny," said Mac mischievously. "He's an expert."
And last came Sidney Fahr, round and merry, who looked casually in, nibbled at a gumdrop and professed amazement to find so many there. Kenny unreasonably chose to take affront at his chronic amazement and withdrew to a corner in a state of gloom and disgust, whence Kreiling, sensitively alive to atmospheric dissonances, routed him forth with the heated accusation that he was not gemütlich.
Enchanted rain surely! For it transformed the single pane into many, like a checkerboard of glass, and through it he was staring queerly into the farm. Kreiling mopped his forehead at the end and switched on the lights. The silence he understood and liked but his keen eyes lingered in surprise on Kenny's face. His color was gone, his eyes curiously tired and wistful.
Whitaker did it for him. "They'll come in and play music on my piano," he insisted sulkily, "and sing notes into my air and I repeat I'm in no mood for music." But Kreiling, big, blond and Teutonic, was already striding in with Caesare at his heels. They filled the air with joyous greetings, thumped upon the intervening wall for Garry and unloaded their pockets and an institutional leather bag.
"So!" said Kreiling gently and passed on to the cheese with deliberate tact, pushing Jan away. A minute later his hand came down with heartiness on Kenny's shoulder. "Spitzbube!" he rumbled affectionately. Kenny laughed but Whitaker saw that his cigarette was shaking. "Music," he reflected, feeling sympathetic, "always makes him wild and sentimental. And Max sang like an archangel."
It was no longer merely a delirium of the senses in which he knew suffering no less than ecstasy. It was a big, kind, selfless tenderness that grew from day to day. A thing perhaps for eternity! Kreiling was right. Kenny's irreverent philosophy of the heart crumbled into ashes at his feet. Love he had once believed was poetic like summer lightning.
"Cheese," rumbled Kreiling, "jam, coffee and mince pies." Caesare unsheathed his fiddle and played a preposterous rag-time interpretation of the Valkyrie's battle-cry. It evoked an instant response from the telephone. "It's Mac," said Whitaker. "He says he'll be down in a jiffy and bring Jan with him." "Tell him," grumbled Kenny, "to bring beer instead.
In the glow of their camaraderie he was always at his best, excited, joyous, irresponsibly gay and hearty. But to-night the fun and sparkle passed him by. Garry was right. He was surely not himself. Could it be just Brian? "'Pagliacci!" demanded someone. Kreiling laughed indulgently and beckoned Jan to the piano. His big voice, powerful and tender, swept into the hush like a splendid bird.
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