“I was supposed to write a composition,” he said.
That was in grade school, but now Yasuo was in junior high. They didn’t assign compositions like that in junior high, so Ōura thought it was probably pretty safe to assume he was in the clear this time.
The last day of vacation passed without further incident, but when Yasuo returned from the opening day of the new term, he reported to his mother:
“I found out we had a music assignment.”
“See. That’s why I asked you the other day.”
“Other people didn’t know about it, either. I wasn’t the only one.”
“It’s because you don’t pay attention. But never mind that. What’s the assignment?”
“We’re supposed to listen to some music and write our impressions.”
“What kind of music?”
“He didn’t say.”
“But there’re lots of different kinds of music. He must have said something.”
“Hunh-unh, it doesn’t matter,” Yasuo said blithely.
Their voices carried through the house, and Ōura now emerged from his study.
“It’s homework for school, so I doubt it can be just anything,” he said. “I’m sure your teacher expects it to be serious music.”
“I think so, too,” his wife agreed.
“It should be Mendelssohn, or Schubert, or Johann Strauss, or someone like that.”
“Definitely.”
Which gives a pretty good idea of the elder Ōuras’ taste in music.
Mrs. Ōura had already put away the morning paper, but she got it out again to check the broadcast listings. Since the Ōuras did not own a record player, at times like this they had to rely on radio or television.
When they were first married, shortly after the end of the war, the couple had owned an old hand-cranked player along with a few records—though only a very few.
The world had changed dramatically over the years, ushering in the age of stereophonic sound, but the Ōuras still had only that old player that had to be wound up with a crank. Since the kind of records the machine could play weren’t being made any more, for all practical purposes it was the same as not having any record player at all, and they had finally had the junk man take it away at the time of their move three years ago.
Mrs. Ōura finished looking through the listings. “Just when you need it, there’s nothing listed,” she said.
“There must be something.”
“Well, there is this one, but I don’t know.”
“What is it?”
“At nine o’clock they’re playing something by Mozart called The Impresario. It says it’s an opera.”
“The Impresario?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”
“Neither have I.”
Though Ōura had said he didn’t think he’d heard of the opera, it wasn’t as if he knew Mozart’s other operas all that well either.
“Isn’t something like the Light Cavalry Overture listed anywhere?”
“I don’t see it. That’d be perfect for an assignment like this, but . . .”
“That’s okay,” Yasuo said. “I’ll listen to the one you mentioned. The Imp-whatever.”
“Impresario,” his mother corrected, and then added, “It could be interesting.”
“Yeah, it could be,” Ōura agreed. “If something like this hadn’t come up, I might never have had a chance to hear it, either. Maybe I’ll listen in.”
“Please do,” his wife said.
A few minutes before nine that evening, Ōura went to the boys’ room. Haruko had agreed to lend Yasuo her transistor radio and had just finished tuning it to the right station. Yasuo had cleared just enough space among the piles of clutter on his desk to spread open his notebook.
“Thanks,” Yasuo said. “I can handle the rest.”
“It’ll come on as soon as this program is over,” Haruko said and left the room.
Yasuo sat squarely facing his desk, busily working something with his fingers. Shōjirō was sprawled on his stomach on his bed, reading a comic book.
“You’ll want to start writing as soon as it gets going,” Ōura said. “Are you ready?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’ll only have one chance.”
“I know.” Yasuo did not move. Ōura sat down on Yasuo’s bed.
“What’s that stuff you’re playing with?”
“This? Some wax clay.”
“Why are you working it so hard?”
“To soften it up.”
“Soften it up?” Ōura was about to say something else when the science program that was on before the opera ended. “All right, here goes. Listen carefully so you can really follow what’s going on.”
“Okay.” Yasuo gently placed the lump of soft wax on his desk. He had sculpted it into the shape of a small jingle bell.
First a commentator came on to explain when and how the opera had been written. He launched right in with “A hundred and something-or-other years ago in the year seventeen hundred and something…,” but the date went right by Ōura. Yasuo still sat facing his desk exactly as he had before when he was playing with the wax.
“There, did you get that?” Ōura said. “He said Mozart wrote the opera on a commission from the emperor.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s all you need to know. Hurry up, now, write it down. ‘This opera . . .’”
“This opera,” Yasuo repeated as he began to write.
“The emperor in this case would be the emperor of Austria, but I guess you don’t have to say that. Just say ‘the emperor.’ Part of the trick is to keep it simple.”
“. . . was commissioned by the emperor.”
“Do you know how to write ‘commissioned’?”
“Is this right?”
Ōura craned his neck to see. “That’s right, that’s right. Pretty good. I thought you might not know it. Right, ‘was commissioned by the emperor.’ Mozart was working on The Marriage of Figaro at the time, but as soon as he got this commission, he set Figaro aside and completed The Impresario in a very short period of time.”
“The guy said in two weeks.”
“Did he say that? Good listening. Then you can make that ‘He completed The Impresario in just two weeks.’ I guess Mozart was pouring all his energy into The Marriage of Figaro when he suddenly got this commission, so he wanted to get it out of the way as quickly as he could. Since he