Hands clapped here and there, the sound quickly dying down. Tews then announced the last piece. Jon started playing again, but his high spirits had died with that last, unappreciated note. Something felt wrong. His band felt it, too. When they finished, the hall was dead quiet. Almost half their audience had left after the first piece, and the remaining bunch was already hurrying towards the exit. No one applauded their last song.

Charlie approached Jon and put a hand on his shoulder.

"They just didn't understand it, Orfi," he said quietly. – "But they will, they will. One day we'll be play in the Prince Albert Hall and not in this barn."

They played the same program one more week. Every time there were fewer and fewer people, most of them leaving after the first of Jon's compositions. He began to play as though possessed, frenzied – consumed by a need to take his revenge on an audience that didn't want to listen to him.

When the concerts were finally over, the five of them got together in the same bar to discuss their next move.

"We can't go on like this," said Charlie.
– "Our takings are just enough to cover the rent."

"Money!" Bennie frowned. – "Who needs it? We'll live through it all, somehow. But we have to change our repertoire."

"Listen, Jon," Charlie leaned forward, and stared at his friend with earnest eyes. – "Let's try writing together. I'll be the fool that your wise and ponderous work needs so much. It should work. What do you say?"

Jon, thoughtfully looking through a Dionysus booklet, raised his head.

"Sure," he said indifferently. "All right."

In the beginning everything went wrong. Jon and Charlie argued constantly, without moving forward a single step. Bennie became the one to always reconcile them. It happened one late evening, when he arrived unexpectedly at Jon's in the middle of an argument. He sat down calmly in an open armchair, and listened to his band mates raging at each other, occasionally chipping in with some insignificant remark. Somehow the dispute got settled by itself, just by him being there. From that day on, Bennie was constantly sitting in that armchair, always straightening out the glasses perched on his nose.

Two weeks later, Jon took out the last of his money to pay for their latest playbills and the rent.

Hardly anyone came. At the back of the hall, five friends took their seats and clapped. The echo in the hall sounded miserable. Charlie tested a chord, Bennie let rip, and the concert began. Jon played technically correct, but without much inspiration. At the back of his mind he was thinking up an alternative to this mess: while they played Charlie's songs, they could also...

Something was wrong with the way the band was playing. The audience didn't seem to notice, but Jon caught the dissonance the moment it appeared. It took him a second before he realised what it was: Bennie played to a slightly different beat, and everyone else was trying to adjust to him. In a few seconds the character of the music had changed significantly. The rhythm became choking, pulsing with some unpleasant tension. Nick was forced to squeeze more out of his bass, while Jon struggled with theme, and when the theme was over, he felt a taste of salt on his lips. His fingers was trembled. The song ended, and sudden spectators' applause hammered down on the band like thunder. The musicians had never heard anything like it. But the band members had no more power even to be happy.

"We'll be sold out tomorrow," whispered Charlie. He needn't have whispered; the audience wasn't listening, it was too busy applauding.

When the last of the audience disappeared, Jon shoved Bennie against a speaker.

"You remember that beat, don't you?" The pianist's left eyelid was trembling.

"Why?" croaked Bennie.

"Why!" The audience went mad with it. Or you haven't see it?"

"I didn't change it on purpose," admitted Bennie. – "I broke my glasses. With one stick. I was so goddamned nervous when I broke my glasses, I..." Bennie glanced apologetically at his band mates. "Sorry, guys, I hurried things on a bit – my leg was so jumpy."

"Would you like to purchase something, sir?"

"Yes," Jon answered, signing the check. – "I'd like a full Dionysus concert set. Instruments from this list, all the latest models." He stuck out his tongue at the stunned salesman.

The following rehearsal went like a dream. The equipment was set up and tuned in five minutes. Everything was taken into account: the hall's humidity, resonance of the walls, convexity of the ceiling, characteristics of each instrument, distance from the stage to the chairs. The band's instruments responded to the slightest touch; they memorized the physiology of their performers, and so the sound could change with the heartbeats of every musician or with the vocalist's breathing. Jon couldn't stop fawning over his new keyboard, while Charlie petted his guitar as if it was his soul mate. Bennie and Nick almost cried with happiness when they first touched their instruments. Tews was the only one who refused to put away his trusty flute.

"Praise Dionysus!" – Jon said one day when he opened another official invitation. – "What were you saying, Charlie?"

"The Prince Albert Hall?" asked Charlie.

"Exactly." – Jon smiled as Charlie whooped and generally made a fool of himself. He ended up kneeling before an amplifier, raising hands to the logo of the youth in the tabby pelt.

"Evoe, Dionysus!" howled Charlie in ecstasy.
– "Let your hand rest on the crowns of these poor musicians."