Somewhere in the world, to a family named Kovacs, Garcia, Smith, Kim, Tomiko, or Maw, a boy was born. For whatever reasons-no one ever knows why about such things- he demonstrated fascination with music and rhythms as soon as he could control any movement at all. His parents did not enjoy music extraordinarily, nor did they practice it beyond humming or singing a few common tunes, but anything musical obsessed the attention of the boy.
His facility grew with age, and he quickly learned the rudiments of any musical instrument he was allowed to explore. Rhythm fascinated him more than harmony, and he investigated rhythm however he could, first by a hungered listening to all music, from sambas to Stravinsky, and then, as his knowledge grew, a continuous study of everything he found written upon the subject. He sought musicians and plagued them with questions so long as they tolerated them, but at least he listened as if hypnotized to every performance he could attend.
He found traditional African music to be a fount of rhythm study for, in its complexity and development, he discovered himself, or as much of one's self as one ever discovers. Although western musicologists tend to interpret African rhythms as being layers of counterpoint, the musicians themselves see rhythmic patterns as a whole. It was this more sophisticated understanding that he wanted to achieve, and he surprised himself one day by realizing, after the fact, that he had.
Although he had experimented brilliantly with borrowed instruments of various kinds, his future was determined by the gift of an uncle, who gave him a worn pair of bongo drums. That he might have developed equal mastery of other instruments, such as the violin or piano, which were beyond his economic reach, never occurred to him because the bongos were the ideal medium for his exploration of rhythm. He never felt deprived.
It had never occurred to him that he might have made a well- paid career of.music had he directed his natural ability toward more fashionable music. It, in fact, never occurred to him that music could be a means as well as an end. But he was not so naive or impractical as to think either that the bongos, however great his proficiency, would bring him a livelihood, or that he could live without an income-producing trade. He chose to become a nurse.
Nursing training was relatively cheap, available, fast, and would guarantee him work when he needed it, for he knew that nurses, even male nurses, were always in demand. He was remarkably bright and quick to learn the various requirements for an occupation which really meant little to him in itself; the pride and ambition that might have accompanied his success was non-existent, for nursing was only a means to support his music.
He began work as soon as he was certified because he intended to save money to travel and further his musical experience. Disappointed to find that male nurses are commonly used as hospital policemen, he accepted the greater part of his chores, lived very frugally, and saved every possible penny to eventually book passage on a tramp steamer, the least expensive means of trans-oceanic travel available to him. While en route to the Philippines, he was struck by the idea that he could work as a seaman and thus be paid for taking the same voyage he was paying for. He ingratiated himself with some of the crew and, by his arrival at Luzon, knew enough to try signing on a ship whenever he decided to leave. This was not as difficult as one might think, for the unglamorous steamers often paid little and were pleased to have a crew member who knew medicine at no extra pay. Although he eventually held papers as a pharmacist's mate, most of the captains under whom he served found it convenient to hire him as an able-bodied seaman with inexpensive medical knowledge.
Thus he managed to support himself and travel the world, always to improve his music.
In Luzon, he began a pattern he would reproduce in country after country, town after town. He went to the city and sought the professional musicians there. He knew their manners, jargon, and slang, and infrequently he made food money by playing his bongos. Almost always his playing was instantly admired, and he was home wherever musicians gathered.
After exhausting the newness of the urban musicians, he would then walk though the countryside, listening for the heartfelt music of the people there, occasionally finding a new rhythm or a variation upon an old. The more he travelled, the rarer were the discoveries, but he never ceased travelling, enjoying the music surrounding him, or the improvements he made in his own knowledge and performance. He explored the inhabited continents and, understanding that his knowledge was superficial, explored them again.
Eventually, he became famous among musicians, who would listen with awe at his impromtu playing, and invite him to join their performances, whenever appropriate and sometimes even when it was not. A few had made private recordings of his art, which circulated among the interested, winning him a reputation among people he would never see. A professor at a French university with great difficulty traced him to a port in the Caribbean, where the boy, now quite grown, entertained for several night hours with demonstrations of his art and recitations of his knowledge. The scholar invited the musician to Paris, where professional recordings would insure, said the professor, the man's fame and fortune. The musician promised to visit the professor whenever he happened to be in Paris, but would give no further promise.
The musician never visited Paris. He was hit by a car in Galveston, Texas, and killed. The driver was much disturbed over the accident, which had something to do with the car's brakes failing, but the musician's body was never identified, was cremated, and its ashes lost.
The reporter tossed his whiskey down his throat.
'That's an interesting story,' he said without meaning it. He threw a bill on the bar and walked out quickly enough.
'No one ever seems to believe you, Doc,' said the bartender.
'No one needs to, Elroi,' answered the man in the worn grey suit.
'Maybe if you told what the bongo-player's name was?'
'What difference does it make? One name is as good as another.'
'Yeah,' said Elroi, 'but no one believes you.'
'What makes you think my story is true?' asked the grey.
The bartender decided to clean a far section of the bar. He had long since learned not to puzzle over the mysteries of
his patrons.
