Fall on Your Knees (61 page)

sat —
We go to Abernathy’s Cozy Coffee every afternoon. She thinks music is already out there floating around and it’s up to us to give it an opening into our world so we can hear it. As though the world were full of music we can’t hear with “the naked ear”. So today in class I thought, okay, the song as it should be sung is shimmering around me like air in the desert, and all I have to do is welcome it. So I closed my eyes and opened myself up and let the song pass through me and I thought, “Don’t sing the song, just release it.” When I finished, the Kaiser nodded. I looked at Rose and she gave just the most minute smile down at the keys.

mon. —
She says I’m really a mezzo!!!! She must be out of her mind.

tues —
I asked her if she likes chop suey. But she can’t go anywhere or do anything except our half-hour coffee and she won’t tell me why or where she lives or anything. She pretends it’s boring and changes the subject but I am determined to find out what her secret is. Maybe she’s so poor that she’s ashamed to let me see where she lives. Maybe she’s married. Maybe she has an illegitimate child.

wed —
She said, “Malibran was basically a contralto with a very tough attitude.” Malibran sang Desdemona
and
Otello. And Romeo
and
Giulietta. And everything in between. But that was almost a hundred years ago, no one’s allowed to do that any more. “They weren’t allowed to do it then either,” she said.

thurs 25 —
I invited Rose for supper. I thought, maybe she doesn’t have money to spend on chop suey. She didn’t even think about it, she just said no thank you.

fri — July 26 —
I followed her. She lives in apartment three at 85 ½ 135th St between Lenox and Seventh Avenue, over a second-floor church that’s over a butcher shop that’s tucked between a dentist and a haberdashery named “Dash Daniels Harlem Gentlemen’s Emporium”. Take the Eighth St. elevated.

sat —
I followed her again today and she nearly caught me because she came running back out of her building five seconds after she went in. I ducked in a doorway and saw her make a phone call in the butcher shop. A little kid offered me a taste of his raspberry icecream. I licked it and for some reason he thought I was hilarious.

The Lord’s Day —
Blessed Sunday. Church with Giles and Miss Morriss the only ordeal. I went up to 135th St to see if I could see Rose, and if she left the neighbourhood I could follow her until she got far enough away for us to be able to meet “by accident”.

I got there and there was music rollicking out the second-floor window — if church were like that where I come from, I’d be religious. It was fantastic. Someone was playing piano and there was, I presume, a minister leading the songs, and the congregation joined in, back and forth, back and forth, people taking solos, embellishments like you’ve never heard in a baroque opera, and I swear I saw the building rock. I guess that’s rapture. The crowd in their Sunday best started pouring out onto the street and a big lady, in a hat with more flowers than grow in New Waterford in an entire summer, shooed me away saying, “This is a decent neighbourhood.”

But the church-sized lady served her purpose because she hid me from you-know-who, who also came out with the crowd, wearing an ice-cream-sundae version of her usual embarrassing clothes, and I wondered if that had been her whomping on the piano up there. Somehow I can’t picture it — although I’d like to. Rose headed west and I followed her. She got on the Eighth Ave. I shadowed her all the way to West 14th, where she got off, walked down Greenwich, turned onto my street and went straight up to my building! I felt like I was in a play. The doorman was giving her a hard time so I went in and said in my snobbiest voice, “Thank you Ernie, that will do.” And he said, “I’m sorry, miss, I thought the young lady was mistaken.”

I was dying to tell her that I had just followed her all the way from her place, but something told me she wouldn’t see the humour in it — I’ve seen her smile exactly one half a time. And never laugh. So I tried not to smile, and she was serious as usual when she reached into her leather school-bag and brought out some sheet music. She handed it to me and said, “I think you ought to take a look at these.” So I said thank you, and she said goodbye. She was going to go right home! But I said come for a walk, and she did.

I opened the sheet music when we got to Washington Square and it was Carmen’s “Oiseau Rebelle” and Rosina’s “Una Voce Poco Fa”. She said they were a good contrast to “Cherubino” and “Let the Bright Seraphim” — to say the least — and Mr Gatti-Casazza will probably ask me to sing something of my choice as well as what I’ve prepared and I should just happen to have one of these. She gives a person a present like she was giving them a black-edged telegram. I said, “Setting aside for a moment the fact that I am a soprano, not a mezzo, why are you helping me?” And she said, “You’re going to be a star one way or another, it’s obvious.” I said it’s not obvious to me, at least not lately, and she said, “Your teacher knows it, he’s already told Gatti-Casazza what to expect. There are a lot of singers but you don’t get a voice like yours very often. As well as everything else.” What everything else, I asked. “Presence.”

She said all this as though she were a doctor diagnosing me with a rare disease. I said, “You still haven’t told me why you’re helping me.” And she said, “People pay money to go and listen to stars. I think they should at least hear the music the way it was meant to be heard.” So she’s just doing a public service? She’s awful sure of herself. I asked her if she didn’t agree with everyone else that the Kaiser is one of the best teachers in the world. She said, “He’s a brilliant technician. You can learn a lot from him. And you can unlearn a lot from him, all that nonsense you were doing before. Now you’re ready to stop singing the words and music, and start hearing them.” She could sell the Eiffel Tower to a Frenchman. What she says is smoke, you can’t get ahold of it and it’s basically meaningless. But it works. She couldn’t stay for supper. She’s nineteen; I asked.

Thurs. —
I ran quickly after the lesson again, to catch her and get her opinion on the day’s work. She said to me, “You should be paying me for this,” so I offered to. I expected Rose to be insulted by the offer of money but she actually looked as though she was considering it. She said, “Do you really think I could teach for money?” So I said yes, but that it would be an awful waste. “Why?” Because of your gifts as a composer and musician, I said. Then she started walking again and said to the sidewalk, “I’m not a composer. I just make it up.” I told her that’s what is called composing, but she said she doesn’t write it down. That it’s different every time.

“So write it down,” I told her. And she said, “No.” “Why not?” I asked.

“Because then you kill the bird,” she said.

She is so strange. But I know exactly what she means. I’ve never heard anyone talk like her or play like her but then, when I hear her play, I feel as though I’m hearing music for the first time. And the sound is so beautiful it hurts me. I asked her to come back to Giles’s apartment and play. “Please,” I said, “please, please, please.” And she didn’t say no right away, she said after a moment, “I’d like that. I’d like to take you up on your dinner invitation too. But I can’t this evening.” How about tomorrow? “I’ll ask,” she said. Ask who, I wondered, but did not enquire. I don’t want the bird to fly.

evening —
Frances sent me her own crayon drawing of me singing. It’s adorable. And you know the strangest thing? Along with musical notes coming out of my mouth, there are little birds!

Friday August 2, 5:45 pm —
She’s coming for supper! She’ll be here in fifteen minutes.

later: —
At least Giles isn’t prejudiced. She didn’t act surprised when I introduced Rose as my friend, the accompanist. Rose — she finally told me to call her Rose, I told her to call me Kathleen weeks ago and she stopped calling me Miss Piper but now she doesn’t call me anything at all — Rose was extremely polite, asking Giles all sorts of dull questions about her volunteer work at the convent. Giles has the most morbid job in the world. She looks after nuns who are on their way out. I’d be terrified if I were one of those old girls and saw her coming at me with a tray. Confession: I’ve had some wine. Giles actually poured us wine — apparently it doubles as a medicinal and a celebratory libation. So whether it’s your birthday or you’re having your leg amputated you can count on a swallow of Giles’s choke-cherry wine. I wonder if Rose was scandalized? We played the phonograph for a bit, then Giles took the needle off and asked Rose to play and me to sing. We were both embarrassed, but Rose asked Giles if she had a special request. “Yes, my dear,” said Giles, “‘My Luve’s Like a Red Red Rose’.”
I thought I would die!
I couldn’t look at Rose. But she didn’t bat an eye, just turned to the song and started playing. And I sang. And after a while it didn’t seem so silly at all, and I was glad Giles had requested it because it made me think of Daddy and of home.

Giles had her eyes closed at the end and she said, “Lovely, girls. Just lovely.” I was going to ask Rose what she wanted to play next but she was already playing. Her pieces start like that — before you know they’ve started, they’re just there and gathering. I can’t talk about it. I don’t know how long the piece went on because, remember when I said about how the time signature slipped and slid around imperceptibly? Well, all of time did that while she played. I lost time. I wanted to live in that music, no, to wear it loose around me instead of skin, and after a while I had this flooding thought that this was Rose just thinking. I’m sounding far too Irish for my own good. It couldn’t be the Lebanese side could it? What’s blarney in Arabic?
B’el Arnay?

I thought it might be the wine. But it’s the music. Giles was asleep when Rose stopped playing. I had tears all over my face, but it didn’t feel like crying. Rose sat for a few bars of silence, then turned and said she had to go. I wanted her to stay and talk but I knew it would be wrong to ruin the music, so I walked her to the streetcar stop and we didn’t say anything at all. At first it felt so right to be silent. Then it felt awkward, but I of all people couldn’t think of anything to say. So I just said thank you. Finally the streetcar came and she slipped away.

Sat —
You’d think we were total strangers. She called me “Miss Piper”! I wanted to catch her after the lesson but Kaiser kept me back to give me a present! It’s a beautiful book, Emma Albani’s memoirs,
Forty Years of Song
. He said it would inspire me, “she being your countrywoman,” and at any other time it would have been the highlight of my whole life, but today it meant Rose had already caught the streetcar by the time I finished thanking the Kaiser.

He wrote in it, “For Miss Piper. One poised to clasp the torch. May you carry it another forty years.” Wow.

Emma Lajeunesse changed her name to Emma Albani. Maybe I should change mine to something Italian-sounding too. Kathleen New Waterfordi. From Capo Bretoni.

mon — 5 —
She barely looked at me the whole lesson. So afterwards I wouldn’t let her get on the streetcar, I grabbed her schoolbag with all her music in it and ran into Central Park. I was laughing my head off but she was furious. And she is very strong. Nearly took my arm off grabbing the thing back. Thought she was going to kill me but she stomped away with her silly hair-ribbons bobbing so I made a scene. First I yelled at the top of my lungs, “I like you, I want to be your friend, why are you such a silly goose?” But she just kept walking. Then I caught up to her and started singing. I was laughing so hard by then I could hardly get the song out, “My Luve’s Like a Red Red Rose”. I don’t know why I was laughing, I felt like a demon and I couldn’t stop. She ignored me until we reached the park gate again, then she turned and clapped her hand hard over my mouth so water sprang to my eyes. It made me wild. I bit her hand, that got her moving, and I grabbed the school-bag again and this time I didn’t fool around, I ran all the way to the pond with her right on my heels, I knew she’d beat the can off me if I let her catch me. Thank God I got to the pond just barely ahead of her, I leapt on a rock and dangled the school-bag over the water.

We were out of breath and I felt badly right away when she said, “Please.” But I pressed on, “Please what?”

“… Please, Miss Piper, don’t drop it.”

And I screamed back at her like a
banshee
, I don’t know what got into me, “Please WHO?”

“Please….”

“What’s my name?!”

“Kathleen.”

I felt suddenly ashamed and she wasn’t mad any more, she was something else, I don’t know what. But I didn’t want to let her off that easy, I said, “Maybe I’ll just have a wee look, find out what’s your big mystery.”

“No!”

She lunged and I dropped it. But just into my other hand, which made her yelp. I started to unbuckle it. And the strangest thing — she turned and started walking slowly away. I didn’t have the heart to open it then. I followed her saying, “Here, you can have it back.” But she wouldn’t answer me. I caught up to her easily and that’s when I saw she was crying. For the first time she actually suited the clothes she wears. I felt terrible. I wished she’d get mad again. I put the school-bag back into her hand and I said, “I didn’t open it.” But she just wiped her free hand across her eyes and didn’t look at me. I gave her my hanky and she blew her nose. I walked her all the way back to the streetcar stop and stood beside her, waiting, even though she never looked at me or said another word.

I tried not to watch her because she didn’t stop crying. I couldn’t stand the sounds she was trying not to make, or that she held her head up, why didn’t she at least look down? I would. I felt so ashamed. I did it on purpose, I wanted her to cry. Why? There must be something wrong with me. She should never have to cry in front of anyone, beautiful Rose. I’m sorry. I love you.

Rose would hate me if she read this.