Bob works on his wind, does breathing exercises. He practices the clarinet every day now, works hard, is making some progress. Twice a week, he performs at open stages, downtown. At one of these, Tuesday nights at a small, well-established affair in an overheated church basement, Bob plays on the church piano, a dowdy brown upright, or his guitar. Occasionally, he sings. But at the second, Friday nights at a café on College, Bob is more adventurous. The performers are younger, less folksy. He feels the urge to experiment.

His best performance took place on a humid summer night earlier this year. Inspired by the sweaty, huggy, muggy atmosphere of the room, the shouting poets, the unusually extended music, he pulled out his copy of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, Knopf, 1995, translated from the German by John E. Woods. Bob lifted his mechanical pencil from the chest pocket of his white dress shirt, clicked it once, and lightly marked an appropriate passage. He detached the body of his clarinet from its mouthpiece and held it in his hand until his name was called.

Bob walked calmly to the front of the room. He stood on the slightly raised stage in the corner amid other people’s equipment and tangled wire and surveyed the audience in silence for a solid minute. When people began to move restlessly, exude a satisfactory level of discomfort, Bob lifted the clarinet’s mouthpiece and blew loudly, a resounding duck’s call. He held The Magic Mountain in front of him and opened it to the marked section, a paragraph describing Hans Castorp’s reflections on anatomy, physiology and biology. Bob cleared his throat. In his flat, somewhat monotonous voice, he read:

What was life, really? It was warmth, the warmth produced by instability attempting to preserve form, a fever of matter that accompanies the ceaseless dissolution and renewal of protein molecules, themselves transient in their complex and intricate construction. It was the existence of what, in actuality, has no inherent ability to exist, but only balances with sweet, painful precariousness on one point of existence in the midst of this feverish, interwoven process of decay and repair. It was not matter, it was not spirit. It was something in between the two, a phenomenon borne by matter, like a rainbow above a waterfall, like a flame.

Bob paused, worked up some saliva in his mouth. He imagined that he had a cigarette, right then, and a glass of very cold water. A few people in the audience clapped, hopefully. Bob skipped over several lines and began to read again:

Out of overcompensation for its own instability, yet governed by its own inherent laws of formation, a bloated concoction of water, protein, salt, and fats – what we call flesh – ran riot, unfolded, and took shape, achieving form, ideality, beauty and yet while all the while was the quintessence of sensuality and desire. This form and this beauty were not derived from the spirit, as in works of poetry and music, nor derived from some neural material both consumed by spirit and innocently embodying it, as is the case with the form and beauty of the visual arts.

Bob paused again, briefly. He began to read again, gradually raising his voice and finishing Mann’s twisting paragraph in a raspy yell:

Rather, they were derived from and perfected by substances awakened to lust via means unknown, by decomposing and composing organic matter itself by reeking flesh.

Bob took a deep breath, quieting his irritated lungs. He waited, weighing the pressure of silence in the room. He blew another squawk on the mouthpiece of the clarinet, then bowed, deeply and sweepingly, raising the novel into the air. The audience clapped, uncertainly. Confused laughter rose from one corner of the room. Bob walked, with conscious modesty, back to his table. Even before he could play it properly, the clarinet had been put to good use.

Pamela MacIsaac has published poetry and short fiction in a variety of journals, including Jones Av., paperplates, The Breath, Another Toronto Quarterly, Plum Ruby Review, and Transition. She lives in Toronto with her wonderful partner, amazing daughter, and spoiled pets.