The Tie that Binds

The Bergonzi String Quartet was in Periwinkle County last night for a performance in The Pine Gulch music festival. Last week it was The Greene Clay Ramblers, who are named for Patrick Clay's brother, playing their "greene grass" music on their homemade instruments in Pine Gulch itself. The Bergonzi, though, played in the St. Limpy Cathedral, on majestic instruments 500 years old.

[The cathedral is named for St. Limbiana, but generations of four-year-olds have made the name more accessible.]

Randall and Claire Nathan went to both concerts, of course. Never, thought Randall, have stringed instruments sounded less alike or more alike than those of The Greene Clay Ramblers and The Berzonzi String Quartet.

Randall was not surprised to see Zeke Domkowski in Pine Gulch for the Ramblers, wearing his usual plaid shirt and overalls. He was quite taken aback, though, when Zeke came in to St. Limpy's at the last minute and walked right down to the front pew. He was wearing his overalls, of course, but with them, a brand new white shirt, and a narrow pink and gray tie right out of the 1950s.

Seeing Zeke in a tie got Randall looking around for other ties. He is the only man who wears a coat and tie to The Methodist on Sunday mornings and he rather enjoys that distinctive status. At St. Limpy's on a Wednesday night, though, there were six other coat and tie outfits. He couldn't believe it. Then he realized: each church has one man who wears a coat and tie on Sunday morning, and they had all come on Wednesday night to hear the Bergonzi, and since they always wore coats and ties to church, here they were. It made him feel almost non-curmudgeonly.

It got him to thinking about the preacher who did a funeral for a man who had hanged himself in his barn. As the closing hymn, the preacher chose "Blest Be the Tie That Binds." He wonders why so many men think that ties bind; he's always thought it was a sign of freedom. Then Bartok struck and dissed all thoughts about anything, including ties, from his brain.

It was the piece before intermission, Bartok's Quartet # 1, Opus 7. Randall is a narrativist, and he does not suffer Bartok gladly, since he wouldn't have recognized a melody if it jumped down his throat. At intermission, he was pacing the courtyard out front, muttering about dissonance, when he realized someone was pacing with him. He looked up. It was Zeke.

His face was aglow and aghast at the same time. "Have you ever heard anything as magnificent as that Bartok?" he rasped. "That's why I came, to hear that live."

Of course, Randall thought. Bartok and Domkowski are tied together over the centuries by that dissonance of unrequited love. That was what happened to poor Bela' that caused him to eschew the melodies of love for the jumbles of hopelessness, and it is what Zeke lives with each day, his grandly unrequited love for Ophilia Bandervilt. Zeke was there to hear the music of his life, and it required a tie.

"Sometimes," Randall said to Claire on the way home, "it is dissonance that provides melody and narrative."

"Your tie is crooked," she said.