Part I
DD and the doc stayed at the place in Davos for a week, and then, after making sure Harry was in capable hands, they returned to San Francisco. Didi and the Colonel stayed at a rented chalet not far away, until Colonel Goodman returned to Israel, that is. After that, Didi moved back into her room in the main house, leaving the two remaining bedrooms for Ida and Lloyd. Harry, of course, remained hospitalized, only now at an orthopedic clinic down the valley, where reports were that he was sleeping twenty hours a day and not at all interested in his physical therapy sessions.
Didi took Lloyd to look at a couple of boarding schools, which only seemed to depress the boy more than he already was, then DD sent word that Todd Bright wanted to come to visit and the boy's spirits picked up a bit. He arrived a few days later, riding up from Zurich on the train. For Didi, anyway, things began to look up a bit.
Because more than anything -- or so it seemed after his arrival -- Todd wanted to spend time with the boy. So Lloyd took him skiing, and Didi spent a whole day with them at the new studio's construction site -- with Todd pouring over the plans with the local architect who had drawn up the plans. Lloyd joined in these brainstorming sessions and that seemed to lift his spirits further, and in the evenings Ida and Todd listened as Lloyd worked through new ideas on the Bösendorfer in the living room. So, in a way, Lloyd seemed to break free of his emotional lethargy, though the change itself seemed to be dependent on Todd Bright.
But then one day Todd announced to one and all that it was time to go visit Harry in the hospital, and Didi -- looking closely at the boy for any kind of reaction to this unexpected development -- thought she saw a shadow cross over his face. 'He feels betrayed,' she said to herself. 'I wonder why?'
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The orthopedic clinic was located atop a small hill between Davos and Klosters, and every patient room had spectacular views of the alps to enliven their spirits. Some noted that the views were present to lend credibility to the somewhat exorbitant costs of treatment at the facility, but such people can never be pleased. Todd Bright was impressed with the sprawling view from the sun terrace, that much was clear, and when his nurse wheeled Callahan out into the sun Todd seemed to blossom.
Didi and Ida saw it in an instant, though Didi was almost certain that Lloyd was too inexperienced to pick up on the signals Todd was putting out. And Todd was putting on a real performance that morning, as nurses and orderlies and even a few physicians had come out to the sun terrace to see, and perhaps even meet, the most famous grunge rocker in America. Then Todd told the gathered medicos that the real star of the show was actually Harry Callahan because Harry had helped structure their last album from beginning to end. And of course, how could they not recognize Lloyd Callahan, who had played lead guitar on their tour last summer. And the truth of the matter was that everyone there had heard about Lloyd, and when they realized who he was the youngest girls seemed to grow more vapid than Didi and Ida thought humanly possible.
For his part, Harry sat in his wheelchair under a very heavy blanket, his attentions focused somewhere in the clouds, and Ida couldn't stand it anymore. She went to Callahan's chair and pushed him to a far corner; then she pulled up a chair and leaned into him, kind of face to face, or so you might say.
"What the fuck is wrong with you, Harry?" she hissed. "You have decided to sleep your life away? Is that it? When you have before you the most important task a man can have? To raise his son, to make of the boy a life both can be proud of? You will meet his need by...sleeping? By...staring at the clouds? Harry? What has happened to you?"
Harry looked at her, his eyes glazed and unfocused. "Morphine," he managed to say as a wad of spittle formed at the corner of his mouth before it rolled down his chin.
"What? Do you want more morphine?"
Harry shook his head. "No. Too much morphine. Stop them."
Todd came over and sat with Harry after that. In fact, Todd spent over an hour with Harry, talking incessantly about the new album, hoping Harry would still be able to add a few more contributions before Todd wrapped up production.
"Harry? You look positively stoned!" Todd said at one point, and Harry nodded.
"Morphine," he managed to say.
"Ooh, isn't it wonderful? I am so envious!"
Callahan felt like he was trying to walk through mud up to his armpits, and he couldn't understand how anyone would find that wonderful. "How is Lloyd doing," Harry asked Todd when he found his breath.
"Wonderful, Harry! Just peachy! He's not quite as accomplished on the piano yet, but in a few years? Who knows...?"
Harry smiled. "I'm glad you think so. But you'll need to push him, to keep him focused."
"Okay. What did you have in mind?"
"The piece we were working on? Have you shown it to him?"
"The Fandango? No, not yet -- I was waiting for you. Do you want me to show him? Really?"
But then Harry nodded. "See what he comes up with on his own. Work with him, give him your input after that, then drop by and show me what you two come up with."
And now, by effectively pushing Todd Bright into the role of intermediary between father and son, Harry had given Todd just the entry he needed...and everyone noticed how happy Todd became after that one brief exchange.
But when Ida came over and tried to speak to Lloyd, she found an entirely different reaction than what she had expected. "What's wrong, Lloyd?" she asked -- because she had seen the dark look in his eyes, a look that had, for a moment, well and truly frightened her. "Did something...?"
But then Lloyd had cut her off with a curt nod, yet with a faraway look in his eyes that somehow, to Ida, anyway, seemed alive with barely restrained fury. "Yeah," the boy added a moment later. "It kinda looks like Todd wants to be my mother. And you know, the funny thing is I'm not so sure dad would mind if that happened..."
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Bright had toured in Spain several years before and one evening, with no concert scheduled, the group had gone off in search of fun. For Todd Bright, fun meant inspiration, and as he'd heard all about flamenco off the group went -- in search of Spanish dancers. Yet flamenco is more like a regional dialect, with different regions in Spain and, to a degree, Portugal, practicing different forms and, at the same time, celebrating different aspects of the confrontation between guitarist and dancer. In many parts of Spain, and yes, Portugal, there is another form, a perhaps even more celebrated form of 'flamenco', referred to as a fandango.
At their heart, these dances appear to be a contest of wills, so yes, in a sense the musical representation of human confrontation, yet Todd Bright found that he was captivated by the dialogue between the guitarist and the dancer, or between the hands of the guitarist and the dancer's feet. Then he learned that he had just seen the performance of a fandango, not what some might argue was the more generic flamenco, and he became intrigued. First with the conditions that gave rise to the form, then more and more with the specific structures of the dance.
And at one point he ran into an interesting anecdote about the fandango that captured his imagination, and he was soon consumed with the idea of writing a song that captured the essence of the tale. In the telling of the tale, Todd heard, the clergy in Spain had, several hundred years ago, first heard about the fandango and had immediately decided to decree that such exhibitions of godlessness were a form of heresy. But as sometimes happens -- though perhaps not frequently enough -- the voice of reason interrupted these proceedings and one of the clerics advised that it was simply unfair to ban such things without first hearing and experiencing the music for themselves. What followed was, for Todd Bright, the start of a quest birthed in a moment of pure reason...
The clerics invited the best fandango dancers and musicians in the region to perform, and in short order, the magic of the music captivated everyone in attendance, and so, of course, all talk of banning the music simply disappeared. And while this episode is instructive it is not the equal of, say, rediscovering Aristotle's lost manuscripts and kicking off the enlightenment, yet, for artists and musicians in ultra-conservative Spain, freeing the fandango was a sort of watershed moment...
...and it was this moment that fascinated Todd Bright...
