Dancing to Mozart

By Edward Eriksson

The culture is out of control, everyone knows it, and Dancing to Mozart is an imaginative satire that will appeal to readers who sense that the best way to deal with the situation is to have a good laugh at its expense. Personal relationships, silly behavior, Hollywood movies, extremes in politics and religion–eccentric characters and other wacky stuff offer the reader a good deal of amusement in colorful worldwide settings that include Europe, Africa, Asia, and New York City. Of course, there is a plot to the story, and it carries the reader along to the final and sensible ending, where all is resolved and the characters come to a common sense view of themselves and the world around them. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Jul 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781977266682

Edward Eriksson

Edward Eriksson is a novelist, playwright, and poet. He has acted in dinner theater and off-Broadway houses in NYC, and tackles translations of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil. As a professor he enjoys teaching Shakespeare and all sorts of poetry. He lives with his wife on Long Island and loves to travel anywhere the wind will take him. 

Book preview

Dancing to Mozart

All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2023 Edward Eriksson

v4.0

This is a work of imaginative fiction. Any resemblance to actual people and events is laughably coincidental.

The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

NOVELS

Moonbeam Slyder

Dancing to Mozart

Flamingo Desires

PLAYS

Good Citizenship

Passing Passions

Déja Who?

6 Actors in Search of a Character

Proposing Paradise

Cooking with Germs

AMUSEMENTS

The Wisdom of the Master

Reality Slows Me Down and 30 More Theatrical Auditions

CHILDREN’S STORY

Orlando the Archer and the Princess of the Four Winds

This book is dedicated to my children,

Eddie, Jennifer, Liisa, Eve, Michael, and Xanthe

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." -Friedrich Nietzsche-

Acknowledgement

I wish to thank Alan Margolis for all his technical work on the design of the manuscript.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Dancing to Mozart

Chapter Two: Simón Sez

Chapter Three: Olson Mendoza

Chapter Four: Pygmies at Large

Chapter Five: Blossoms in Winter

Chapter Six: A Timely Rescue

Chapter Seven: Mohammed Saves

Chapter Eight: Echo-Space

Chapter Nine: The Bhagavad Burrito

Chapter Ten: Touching Down

Chapter One

Dancing to Mozart

As fate would have it, Brenda and Hugo Cranston vacationed in the Catskills in a cabin they’d rented for a week. Once there he begged her to go with him to a classical music concert in a little auditorium in a half-deserted village in a valley between two enormous mountains. Hugo’d gotten pretty fudgy in his old age—he was six years older than Brenda—and began to eat purple ice cream with raisins while watching movies on the Disney Channel. He’d also developed a crazy devotion to the music of Mozart and would listen to almost nothing else. The program for the evening offered the Korean virtuoso, Kim Jong Park on the piano, playing pieces by Mozart, Chopin, and Brahms. Hugo begged and begged, and reluctantly Brenda agreed to go.

This Kim Jong Park (known to his Facebook friends as Chunky) was famous for a father who trained him as a pianist by standing behind him and slapping his ears with a ruler whenever he struck a wrong note: So that at the age of forty-six he played like an angel and then drank like a fish and got himself arrested occasionally on charges of disorderly conduct. As usual on this night his execution was marvelous; and its effect on Hugo Cranston was visible on his face, his eyes dreamy and his body practically limp..

Unlike many accountants who punch away at numbers well into their seventies, Hugo looked forward to retirement in a year or two; and then instead of working at figures, he planned to work on himself. His choices as a younger man had been, in his own assessment, couched solely in material things; and now having over the years bought himself and Brenda a two-bedroom apartment on the upper West Side of Manhattan, a condo in Florida, a German automobile, and a dozen or so meretricious chochkes from boutiques on Madison Avenue; in addition to yearly subscriptions to six popular magazines, ten or so tickets a year to the Yankee and Knick games; and additionally empowering Brenda with thirty-eight credit cards for impulse shopping and other urges, along with Broadway shows and popular restaurants; as well as for occasional cruises in the Caribbean and Mediterranean or tours to the Southwest, Rocky Mountains, or Alaska: having achieved so much in forty years as a humorless drudge bent over calculator, paper, and pen with erasable ink, in a maelstrom of forms and digits, Hugo needed more from life, more, more in what he came to understand as soul-stimulation.

Now there was the chubby Kim Jong Park on the stage, and here were Brenda and Hugo in the first row on the left, where they could comfortably view the performer’s fingers fly trippingly over the keys. Hugo kept muttering, Marvelous, entranced by this animated gentleman’s performing Mozart’s 21st Piano Concerto in a solo rendition scored by Mr. Park himself. What he felt as marvelous was hard to explain. He could not have found words; rather, he understood in the depth of his soul in the midst of the painfully beautiful second movement, as the pianist’s fingers now glided slowly over the ivories, that he had two choices, either to weep or to dance. For him, however, weeping in public was out of the question; yet it became impossible for him to hear the music and watch Chunky Park’s fingers caress the keys–his head bowed forward and then swung back with its raggedy mop of prematurely gray hair springing up as if in the throes of an electric shock–without standing and dancing, bare hairy legs and all, up and down the two aisles.

Yes, bare hairy legs. Like most men in the audience who sat with their wives next to them, he wore tan baggy shorts and a loose-fitting short sleeve shirt. The house had a hundred and fifty seats, with at least fifty left empty, the rest being filled by classical music lovers of the average age of seventy. Hugo had paid the senior citizen’s price, but still, given the aging crowd, he actually felt young. And delighted. And that is when he rose and began to dance.

Of course, he provoked hard stares; and his wife, too embarrassed to turn and look, several times said aloud to herself, What is this idiot doing now? while the entranced Korean played on unperturbed; and as Hugo blithely, goofily, yet gracefully tossed his body here and there in a dreamy two-step punctuated with pirouettes, his arms swinging above his head with flapping hands and then outward like wind-borne wings; his feet, as he felt, daintily keeping time to that second movement, the painfully evocative andante that gave such beauty to the rapturous inanity of the movie Elvira Madigan.

But, oh, he felt younger than young, strangely liberated, cavorting about in delicious serenity; as all the while Kim Jong Park played on undisturbed, moving back and forth in his sensual affair with the satiny black grand piano.

Soon enough, however, two ushers, teenagers, one male, one female, in uncreased brown chinos and black t-shirts, came from the back and escorted him out of the auditorium and into a private office, where they sat him in a chair and began to badger him.

You did understand, said the boy sarcastically, that this was Mozart?

I did, replied Hugo, catching his breath. Was this kid serious? I can read a program.

This isn’t a rock concert, said the girl, smirking. Duh.

The audience didn’t come here to be distracted by some old guy’s gyrations, added the boy, looking humorously deadpan.

Nor the pianist.

Nor your wife, for that matter.

Except for their gender, the two were indistinguishable, both with darting eyes, acned faces, and lots of teeth, except that the girl had black hair and the boy had blond. Both were perhaps seventeen years old, and smelled of cologne, for men or for women or for both. Insulted and embarrassed, Hugo could barely believe their jaunty, mocking manner. He felt lost, helpless. He was against two jokers, high school seniors ready to begin their final year of no work and all play. Why couldn’t he simply stand and walk out of the room? His head spun. He couldn’t believe that he didn’t start slapping one of them silly. But he was winded from his frolicking about, and he felt suddenly very old. Then, out of desperation, even though he knew they played him for a dithering imbecile, he decided to appeal to what he supposed was their artistic sense of things:

You work here? You know something about music? He looked but saw no response. Then of all people you kids should understand that music is feeling.

Wrong, said the black-haired girl, cocking her head to the side. Not always.

You need to cool down, continued the blond guy peaceably. If this were a rock concert, it would be another matter. But, you need to understand—and both my friend and I know this–with Mozart this kind of behavior is out of the question.

We have a responsibility to the public, added the other standing straight with her nose in the air. And of course so do you. She looked down at Hugo, putting her hands on her hips. But her eyes were dancing in her face, and it seemed as if she was about to burst out laughing.

Unable to restrain himself, Hugo cried, Doesn’t anyone understand? Doesn’t anyone see the issue here? I was dancing because I felt inspired.

Both ushers, however, acted as if they didn’t hear him.

Okay, sir, said the young man, after a long pause, during which he and the young lady looked back and forth between themselves and Hugo, the management politely requests that you stay here with us until the police arrive.

The police? asked Hugo. Why?

Then you can go with them, said the dark-haired girl, not answering Hugo directly. Because we’ll be finished with you, she continued, letting out a big sigh.

Can I get my wife … ?

She’s already home, he was told. And this was true as he later discovered.

Home? Already?

Of course, both spoke one after the other; she followed you out, but the theater director offered to drive her home, and she accepted. You understand, we’re not barbarians, concluded the one—Hugo couldn’t distinguish who was what—while the other smiled on one side of his or her mouth.

Hugo sat dumbfounded. The police? Five minutes passed in silence.

Then the two told him of an incident with an elderly lady who died of a stroke doing the same thing Hugo had done. Dancing to Mozart. In those very aisles. They both nodded, deadpan.

How does a person get a stroke dancing to Mozart? he asked.

It happened, said the blond-haired boy quietly, stone-faced. We weren’t here when it did. But you can imagine … . He didn’t finish, but Hugo suddenly caught an odd look on his face that suggested the two had made up the whole thing.

But, he began, bewildered, desperately glancing about the office, which contained only an empty desk and three chairs. He noticed that the bare walls were painted green. But how? Gazing at those nauseating green walls, he feared he might vomit. He kept wondering how anyone else might’ve gotten up and danced to a piano concerto, an old woman, no less. But, of course, he understood how, given his own compulsion. But who could believe what these two wise-asses said, anyway?

She was the mayor’s wife, one added as the other nodded.

Oh, muttered Hugo, feeling disoriented, sick to his stomach. I never knew. I’m sorry. Avoiding the green walls, he stared down at his feet.

Too late for that, said the other.

Soon two policemen entered the room.

What happens now? Hugo asked as they led him out into their patrol car. He could hear laughter behind him—from them.

The judge will see you in the morning, they told him, then drove away to the local police station, where they locked him a small holding cell.

After a few hours alone in the clink, stupefied and outraged, Hugo looked up and saw the fat pianist, Chunky Park, led to the door of his cell and admitted. His first impulse was to congratulate the man on his performance, but Park woozed side to side in a drunken stupor, his head lolling, his shoulders caving inward, and his speech a garbled Korean. So Hugo let him sleep on the floor beside him while he waited till eight in the morning for the judge to arrive. He spent the interim half snoozing and half worrying about Brenda; first, whether she worried about him now that he had tried to phone her and gotten no response and, secondly, whether she was angry at him for having gone prancing around the auditorium like a demented old fool. And now, thirdly, if she had found out about his arrest whether she would show up at eight to help pay a fine, if that was his penalty for dancing to Mozart.

Meanwhile, around seven o’ clock the pianist awoke and started talking to him as if the two of them had been old friends somehow mixed up in an amusing gaffe.

This happens to me all the time, he explained in perfect English. Don’t you worry, man. I know a lawyer. Smartest brain in town. He’ll help.

The judge had Hugo pay over the exact amount of money he’d emptied onto the police desk before he was placed in his cell. It was twenty-six dollars and seventeen cents. Brenda, oddly enough, made no appearance.

Confused and angry, (but with the business card for Edgar Hung, Esq. in his wallet) he hurried back to the B&B he and Brenda had rented for the week. He hoped that she might be able to explain the treatment he endured in this minor concert hall by those mocking teenage clowns. Perhaps she had a better grasp of the customs here upstate New York. Wasn’t she born in Schenectady? Wasn’t she always so smart about everything? And wasn’t he always accused of being sarcastic about her ability to deal with every little difficulty?

The talk began when he found his wife reading a magazine with one leg up on the couch. He tried explaining, complaining, and finally refraining, from expressing too much anger. Once Brenda digested the whole business, she decided then and there, so it seemed, to end her marriage to this simpleton. She told Hugo to wait in the living room while she went to the bedroom to change her clothes. When she returned, she