Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan Read Online Free PDF

face I recognize. Who is he? Oh, that’s right, a man I often see at concerts. Did he too wander aboard here just like me?
    I look behind me. There should be an aisle leading to the rear cabin, but instead, I see nothing, as if clouds have enshrouded my head. Is that the path to the real world? Or … ?
    A cold something runs up my spine.
    Sky Spider suddenly plays more vigorously: Johan Halvorsen’s Passacaglia on a Theme by Handel. The piece was originally written for violin and viola, but there is also a version for violin and cello. It is a difficult piece, but nothing to be afraid of.
    A short way into the piece, there is a passage where the cello carries the theme. It is a slow, beautiful piece of music, but it gets much more difficult as it goes along. Up-tempo arpeggios are followed by pizzicato on the cello, and then legato, in a repeating pattern. For the violin, it is the reverse. The development strains the players’ nerves. Even so, it is a piece I could go on playing forever.
    Across the aisle, Cerdan is swaying.
    A passacaglia is actually a dance piece, so this is not an inappropriate response.
    The two of us negotiate a passage with double triplets, and move into the marcato section. I match my breathing to the young man’s, and he his to mine.
    The woman who told me “Everything will be fine” looks back and forth, from Sky Spider to me, with affection. There follows a section with a number of sixteenth notes that can only be described as sadistic, followed by two measures in adagio, and then the piece is at an end. The young man extends his hand to shake mine, and says, “That was fun. Between the near shore and the far shore, the passing of years can be a lonely thing …”
    I hug the young man, and pat him on the back. At the same time, my eyes are drawn to the young man’s violin. The very head of it, the scroll has a distinctive line. Unmistakable.
    His violin is a Stradivarius.
    “Who is your teacher?” I ask. “Must be someone famous …”
    The young man does not answer.
    Instead, the woman who had been watching us stands up.
    “It can’t be,” I say, under my breath. “It can’t be.”
    It is not that I knew her from somewhere—she is someone any string player would know. She has a gentle smile, and that is her disguise. I know her by the grimace she generally shows when performing. Her eyes, though, exuding quiet determination, are the same.
    Ginette Neveu.
    A face any string player should recognize. The violinist of the century, recognized as a teenager as a genius. Which makes it all the more surprising to see her here now.
    She had died young, at the age of thirty.
    She and her beloved Stradivarius were on an Air France flight from Paris to America, and it had crashed in the Azores, in the Atlantic Ocean.
    Finally I understand what this place is.
    All the passengers in their outdated outfits. The burned carpet, the musician who does not belong.
    This is that 1949 Air France flight.
2.
    Several passengers approach, their hands extended in greeting.
    I decide to sit down in the seat of one of these passengers, so I can hear what Sky Spider has to say.
    He is fourteen, and is studying with Neveu. He wants to know what to learn next, what to learn after that, staring at me the whole time as he speaks. He seems sincerely desperate to play in larger ensembles. Duos just don’t do it for him.
    I was unaware that Neveu had had a pupil before her accident. Somehow, though, seeing this young man’s talent, I understand.
    I feel gentle waves, the after-echoes of the performance. Like after swimming in the sea.
    If this is a dream, I do not wish to wake up. That is my true, unvarnished feeling.
    I ask him to show me his violin. The old varnish feels soft, familiar. I play a scale on the A string. It has a surpassing, brilliant tone.
    A Stradivarius— Neveu’s Stradivarius—must be worth at least ten million.
    I reel off one phrase after another. Because I yearn, I listen to the