Some external sound was faintly troubling him, something that must have begun under cover of these rising, pealing octave passages—storm waves, each higher than the last, until it seemed that even a superhuman swimmer must be exhausted. An undefinable alien noise, a kind of humming.
Brian shook his head peevishly, shutting it away. It couldn't matter, at least not now. Everything was here, in the beautiful labors his hands still had to do. The waves were growing more quiet, settling, subsiding, and now he must play those curious arpeggios which he had never quite understood—but, of course, he understood them at last. Rip them out of the piano like showers of sparks, like distant lightnings moving farther off across a world that could never be at rest.
The final theme. Why, it was a variation—and how was it that he had never realized it?—a variation on a theme of Brahms, from the German Requiem. Quite plain, quite simple, and Brahms would have approved. Still it was rather strange, Brian thought, that he had never made the identification before in spite of all his study. Well, he knew it now.
Blessed are the dead....
Yes, Brian thought, but something more remained, and he searched for it, proudly certain of discovering it, through the mighty unfolding of the finale. No hurrying, no crashing impatience any more, but a moving through time with no fear of time, through radiance and darkness with no fear of either. Andrew Carr was happy, the light of the Sun on his shoulders.
That they may rest from their labors, and their works do follow after them.
Brian stood up, swaying and out of breath. So the music was over, and the young savages were gone, and somewhere a jangling, humming confusion was filling the Hall of Music, distant, but entering with violence even here, now that the piano was silent. Brian moved stiffly out of the auditorium, more or less knowing what he would find.
The noise was immense, the unchecked overtones of the marimba fuming and quivering as the high ceiling of the Hall of Music caught and twisted them, flung them back against the answering strings of harps and pianos and violins, the sulky membranes of drums, the nervous brass of cymbals.
The girl was playing it. Really playing it.