My Heart Laid Bare (22 page)

S
omething is wrong, gravely wrong, but when Darian wakes early one morning, before dawn, to a sound of wild geese flying overhead, he forgets the sorrow of the household—forgets that
something is going to happen, something to change all their lives
—and lies trembling with excitement. He
will not open his eyes, he wants to keep the sound pure, a music that wakes him from sleep, unbidden, mysterious, fading even as he strains to hear: wild geese, Canada geese, their queer faint honking in the sky, why such sudden beauty, why any world at all,
this
world, and not simply—Nothing?

To express the life, the certitude, the quivering happiness that courses through him at such times—this, Darian thinks, must be what is meant by God.

BUT HE WILL
not tell anyone, he will keep his secret to himself, this is God, trembling in his very body.

SUCH SOMBER CHILDREN,
Darian and Esther!—forgotten children, perhaps, appearing younger than their ages; even Katrina feels sorry for them, is drawn into the parlor to listen to Darian playing the piano (but how odd, the compositions that child invents!), sits for an hour at a stretch with little Esther in her arms, in the window seat watching rain falling into the marsh.

“No one will ever come back, will they, Katrina?” the child asks drowsily. She is not agitated, not even curious, such questions have been asked many times before, they are a child's questions, not to be taken seriously. “And
he
will never come back, I know,” Esther adds, after a confused pause, having forgotten (for she is so very sleepy suddenly) the name of her eldest brother.

YEARS LATER DARIAN
is to recall: they are told that Thurston is away, traveling, on business for Father; he is in Mexico, he will be going to Cuba; returning home sometime in the summer . . . or a little later.

DARIAN WAS TOO
small still to sit at the piano so Father hoisted him onto his lap, gripped his hands firmly in his, Darian's stubby fingers enclosed in Father's big fingers, and they played at making music,
Like this
, Father said gaily,
and like this! this!
striking chords haphazardly up and down the keyboard. (Darian's hands began to smart, in the morning they would be bruised.) In a loud full baritone voice Father sang fragments of a song (“Gott, der Herr, Ist Sonn' und Schild”) while Darian, baby Darian, picked out the melody, frowning in a concentration so intense that droplets of perspiration appeared on his forehead. “Ah, can you do it?
Can
you?” Father cried. “As well as I . . . ” With a flourish he tried to play as he sang, striking notes hurriedly and carelessly, the ring on his smallest right-hand finger clicking against the keys, his fingernails tapping, clicking, as well, everything rushed and frantic, until his two-year-old son squirmed in displeasure, and wrenched himself away. For this was not right, this was not the way it should be, the wrong notes and the wrong rhythms cut through him like a knife blade.

ON MONDAYS AND
Thursdays Darian walks into the village to take his music lesson with Reverend Woodcock, but his happiest times are alone, alone with the piano, hour upon hour and day following day, he is suspended at such times, Darian and not-Darian, he sits at the piano though his fingers are stiff and the nails blue with cold, outside the freezing rain pelts against the windows, against the roof, clattering against the chimney, the sound of the rain is constantly modulated by the wind, as the piano's notes, struck with different degrees of force, acquire mysteriously different textures and meanings: how happy he is! what peace! as if something has closed over his head protecting him from
them
.

There are flights of music that spring up, Darian has no idea how, out of the rain drumming on the roof, the thin howling wind, the harsh
staccato cries of birds in the marsh . . . certain brittle strands of Bach, delicate turns of Mozart, the Civil War marching songs he has heard the band play in the square . . . the gospel hymns he has sung at the Church of the Pentecost where he is Darian and not-Darian simultaneously, clapping his hands, his heart swollen with joy, as Reverend Bogey strides about leading the congregation in song. And there is the sound of Millie's airy insincere laughter, the pretty twist to her lips, the anxious flash of her eyes . . . the sight of Elisha trying to sit up in the snow, blood streaming from his chest (his very heart?), soaking his white, white shirt, splattering onto the ground . . . and the ferocity of Father's embrace, the way he grips Darian beneath the arms, lifts him, kisses him, hard, his hot damp thrusting lips against Darian's mouth: ah, he has been away so long, so very long, it is his fate, it is Fate, he cannot bear it that he is required to be away so very long . . . .

Flights of music interrupted by muffled blows, queer arrhythmic runs, sudden halts and starts . . . flights of music of such uncanny beauty Darian knows they are not
his
. . . though they stream through his aching obedient fingers, as sunlight shatters on a pool of standing water, transforming it without touching it. And, more precious, most secret, the music that has the power to draw Darian's mother Sophie to him . . . gliding silently through the rooms of the rectory . . . appearing in the doorway at his back . . . and he must continue playing, he must not hesitate, or miss a note, or turn his head . . . for if he makes a mistake she will vanish . . . he sees her by way of the music, he sees her through his fingertips, the girl with the riding crop, is it? the haughty young woman of the portrait, dark level gaze, the head tilted slightly to the left, and not the wan dying woman amid the bedclothes smelling of sickness . . . that wasted hand extended . . . Darian? Darian? the blistered lips, the eyes glazing over . . . not
that
woman, never
that
woman but the other, Darian's true mother, the handsome girl in the painting who nods in time with his music, who knows his music beforehand, who
is
his music.

He must continue to play without making a mistake, he must never become frightened, or excited, he
must
not turn his head, as Sophie advances . . . advances . . . to stand behind him, silent, for long ecstatic minutes at a time . . . .How happy, Darian thinks, God is everywhere but God is
here
! . . . and sometimes she will brush her fingertips against his hair or the nape of his neck, sometimes she will stoop to kiss . . . and then he cannot help his reaction: he shivers violently, loses the thread of the music, strikes a false note, and, when he turns his head, he sees that she has vanished.

But Darian knows she has been with him: so very close, her lips had touched his burning skin.

T
hough sentenced to be
hanged by the neck until dead
on 29 May 1910 at the State Correctional Facility at Trenton, New Jersey, surely “Christopher Schoenlicht” who is Thurston Licht, Abraham's eldest, beloved son, will not be hanged; nor will he be incarcerated for the remainder of his life.

“Preposterous!”—Abraham snorts in derision.

“Preposterous!”—Abraham fumbles to relight his stumpy Cuban cigar, which maddens him by so frequently going out.

How many weeks, how many months has Abraham pursued the challenge of how to save his son. It seems like years by now, as 29 May 1910 rapidly approaches.
He will be saved, must be saved—but how? As if a glass were steamed or scummy preventing me to see through. Preventing my vision.
A sensation
hitherto unknown to Abraham Licht, like Odysseus the man of twists and turns, the man of cunning, and calculation, and duplicity, this sensation of paralysis: his fierce mental powers flash like lightning in one direction, and in another, and still another—but to no avail. He will deny it to Katrina and Millie, but his health has been affected; he's lost weight, obviously; his face bears the look of an elegant Roman bust struck by a hammer and threaded with hairline cracks, about to crumple into pieces.

Yet, alone, in his study with the door shut against his family, he contemplates his image in a mirror and finds his spirit, if not his appearance, unchanged. Eyebrows shaggy as steel wool, gaze cold, level and unflinching, the hastily shaven jaws adamant.
So long as I have breath, strength, genius, and cash—I cannot go down in defeat.

Strange how Abraham Licht's talent for invention seems to be hindering him: for he hasn't too few ideas, but too many. “If only I could settle upon a strategy. If only—” Too excitable to remain seated, pacing in his study with the door shut against the others, clutching at his head, sighing, muttering to himself, angrily sucking at the damned cigar that has again gone
out.

His first move was naturally, through (generously paid-off) connections in the Democratic party to apply to the Governor of New Jersey for clemency; for a commutation of Christopher Schoenlicht's sentence to life imprisonment. (With the possibility of an “executive pardon” in a few years when it would no longer arouse local interest.) Negotiations along these lines were going smoothly well into February, when an agent of his named “Albert St. Goar” met with the Governor in secret, at the Governor's private estate in Princeton, to pledge no less than $5,000 to the Governor's upcoming campaign, plus a scattering of smaller donations to “charitable institutions” throughout the state. The Governor, robustly shaking St. Goar's hand, all but gave his word that Christopher Schoenlicht would not hang; a commutation of sentence was “a definite possibility.”
Nothing was said of plans for the young man's escape from prison, of course; for it was very likely that the Governor would disapprove.

Then suddenly, without warning, word came from the Governor's closest aide that the understanding was cancelled. And no further conversations between the Governor and Mr. St. Goar, or between Mr. St. Goar and any of the Governor's men, were to be arranged. “What has happened? How can this be?”—so Abraham Licht protested. Only belatedly learning that the
Trenton Post,
one of the state's “crusader” papers, was investigating the Governor's business connections since stepping into office; and what had seemed to Abraham Licht a fait accompli was rudely erased.

“And I'd already handed over twenty-five hundred dollars of the payment. God damn me for a fool, and him for a knave!”

Only in his memoir would Abraham Licht confess to having been so swindled. It was not a fact he could bring himself to share with any living person at the time.

Next, even as Abraham spent long insomniac nights, with Elisha, poring over plans of the fortresslike prison, and a map of the city of Trenton, and consulted dozens of firsthand accounts going back to medieval times of successful prison escapes, he was arranging through an intermediary for meetings with prison officials: the underwarden, the resident physician, several guards, the Mercer County sheriff and deputies, even the county coroner. In addition, as Abraham lacked solid contacts in the New Jersey underworld, he was obliged to go in person, that's to say as Timothy St. Goar, a Manhattan businessman, to speak with several high-ranking criminals. His plan, increasingly desperate, was to apply for help both outside the prison and in, in the matter of freeing Thurston from his fate.

How friendly these gentlemen! To a man. Accepting “preliminary moneys” from me—in cash.
Yet vague about future meetings. For, as the sheriff himself confided to Abraham, the prospect of freeing a man from both a sentence of death and “The Wall”—as the Trenton prison was known—was
a daunting one. Not only had it never been done in the more than one hundred years of the prison's existence, it had never been attempted.

The Chautauqua earnings reaped by Abraham and Elisha were now nearly depleted. So much money, so quickly! “I can hardly believe it, Father,” Elisha said, blinking tears from his eyes, “—we had more than four hundred thousand dollars. It was
ours.
” Abraham tried to console him, pointing out that no amount of mere money, in the hope of saving Thurston, was wasted. He did resent, though, being fleeced by enforcers of the law—“Hypocrites! Trading on a father's grief.” Elisha said passionately, “We must get more money, then, Father.
Tell me what to do, and I will do it.
”

BUT ABRAHAM LICHT
wondered: Could he ever again risk one of his children in any desperate plan? At Chautauqua, he'd arranged for Elisha to carry a pistol; for purposes of practicality, the pistol had been loaded. What if—? Another person, or a police officer, had intervened with a gun—?

Abraham shuddered, as if he'd witnessed his beloved 'Lisha, his precious Little Moses, drifting, as in a dream, near the precipice of death.

TORMENTED BY VISIONS.
The massive fifteen-foot wall, made of coarse stone and mortar. The labyrinth of inner walls and passageways. The gatehouse. The bare expanse of the yard. Sentry stations, guard boxes, turrets. Hidden rifles on all sides, at all heights. The broad central chimney from which thick black smoke rises. Cellblocks A, B, C, D. The dismal row of cells of the condemned: distinguished from other cells by a certain rank, brackish odor that was said to waft about, all but visible in the air. Beyond were the warden's private quarters, a cheerless four-room apartment. And there was the kitchen, and the laundry room, and the infirmary. And the morgue.

How like a riddle, this labyrinth. How to break it, master it?

Escape by way of—what?—a tunnel. Yes, a tunnel. The most plausible would be from the outer wall to the infirmary, a distance, according to one of the maps, of about fifty yards.

The gallows platform, said to be a weatherworn grim structure, was even closer to the wall, probably less than twenty feet.

In a dream calling my son's name. As, wrists shackled, he ascends to the gallows. But when the fair blond young man turns to me it isn't Thurston but a stranger. Christopher Schoenlicht. Fixing me with a dead man's stare.

It is mid-April, it is the final week of April, suddenly it is 29 April; and nothing has been accomplished.

A great deal of money has been spent; and nothing has been accomplished.

Night after night, locked away in his room at the rear of the house, Abraham Licht and Elisha study the plans of the prison . . . the maps of the surrounding area . . . the pencil sketches that Abraham has made, of the prison and of the gallows.

(If Elisha has a secret of his own, a secret worry mounting to obsession, he hides his thoughts from his father. For his love for Abraham Licht and for his brother Thurston is such,
his
emotions count for very little at the present time.)

One night Abraham moans almost inaudibly, “It cannot be done. He cannot be saved.” A pencil slips from his fingers and rolls across the floor and a moment later, pricked by a sudden thought, Abraham snatches up the pencil again and says, to Elisha's relief,
“Unless . . . ”