Surge

by Frank McGuinness

  – What? Frank asked her when he came back from whatever bar he’d gone to. What do you want from me?

  He sat heavily onto their bed, where she lay with her back to him, her face pressed into her damp pillow.

  – What do you want, Judy? he asked, more gently.

  She whispered it, so he didn’t hear at first.

  – Ya what?

  She lifted her head so he could hear better.

  – A piano.

  Frank liked people to know he could afford the best. He pulled the blankets off with a flourish.

  – What do you think, Judy? Think this’ll make her happy, boys? he asked the delivery men, his audience. They were standing back, two Irishmen, letting him have his moment, probably hoping for a tip. What do you say we get her to give us a tune? What about one of Johnny Ace’s. Come on, baby. Never Let Me Go. Can’t have these boys saying you weren’t worth the top of the range.

  Judy had never played for anyone except her mother before, and she could feel her hands trembling. She moved to the piano, then looked around her vaguely.

  – A stool …?

  Frank’s look turned dark, until he spotted the smaller object by the door. Then he was all smiles again.

  – A stool, boys. Give the lady a stool.

  The stool was unveiled and placed behind her.

  Judy knew the melody; Frank was fond of playing it in his car at full volume. She brought her fingers to the smooth ivory, releasing a single pure note with only the lightest of touches, and another. Then another, all in minor thirds. There was something in the resonance that fixed them all in the stillness, made even Frank shut up. Then, when the last whisper of the chord died away, Judy’s right hand picked out the melody they wanted to hear, and her left hand joined in with the simple runs the song required. Forget about tomorrow, my darling … never let me go, Frank accompanied her loudly, off-key.

  On their way down the front steps, after pocketing a five-dollar bill, one of the movers said under his breath, feckin’ eejit, and something about shooting himself. Judy didn’t find out until later that they were talking about the singer, Johnny Ace, who had shot himself with an accidentally loaded gun.

  The house became filled with the music Mother had taught her. Frank complained that it always sounded sad, but she couldn’t help it, the melancholy seemed to go further back than she did, maybe back to her mother, growing up in a place Judy didn’t know, and couldn’t imagine. Or couldn’t remember. But it was what she heard resonating in her ear. She had to remember to wipe the tears away before Frank came home. Though she wasn’t unhappy, he would not understand.

  Then Joseph came. Judy played him into being. He was dark-eyed and dark-skinned, and Frank said he was the image of the Napoli Paolinis on his mother’s side, but Judy knew he was of her. As soon as he could reach the keys, he played. At two or three he copied what she showed him, her shadow treble, her shadow bass.

  By the time he was six, Joseph could play Mahler as well as his small hands would allow. Though he didn’t understand the music, the feeling of angst, seeping from the fingers of his small son, made Frank frown. Judy taught Joseph to play Debussy’s Feuilles Mortes and Ravel’s dreamy, melancholic Oiseaux Tristes instead. Frank still grumbled, not understanding, but he left them alone.

  The day before Joseph’s seventh birthday, they were doing finger exercises, Joseph speeding up and down the keyboard in finger-perfect semitones. Every note was a dart in Judy’s flesh, because she was preparing Joseph for the Music Institute entrance exams; he was too good for her. They had already come out to hear him play, the President of the Institute himself and a woman. They had stopped in the porch – Judy saw them through the window – listening to Joseph practising. They shook their heads, and looked at each other, and nodded their heads. This was all before they even pressed the bell. The exam was a formality, they said, when they were leaving.

  Up and down the keyboard, four octaves, Joseph’s tongue protruded slightly in concentration. Neither of them saw it coming: the little hands, side-swiped off the keys, the lid slammed down. Frank looked at them while the wood resounded in their ears, daring them. In his hand he held a mitt and a ball and a bat.

  – That stuff’s for little kids, Joey. Little kids and sissies. It’s Little League from now on. Time to forget about all that music.

  Judy has a surprise planned. Young Kane will make a start on the Symphony No. 5 piano transcription, Mahler. Half-German, that’s what his mother said when they first came. It was close enough. The mother was Japanese, and she had sought Judy out, having heard of her reputation from Kane’s school. Kane stood beside her, serious and quiet, while Judy explained to his mother, who wanted him to learn the Suzuki method, that she could only teach the method she learned from her mother. It didn’t have a name, she said.

  Her fingers are giddy with anticipation, but before she can tease the keys with the opening bars, the doorbell rings. Paulie Walsh. As she goes to let the child in she sets aside the familiar, dull disappointment that precedes the child’s lesson every Tuesday – because another week has passed that Joseph didn’t come – and she fills the vacant place with enough justifications to make it right.

  Paulie is red-haired and freckled, and he looks, as always, with his hair sticking out and his clothing all askew, as if he just fell from a tree house. He makes Judy think of that show Joseph used to like to watch, Leave It to Beaver.

  – How are you, Paulie? Judy asks, with a wave to Paulie’s mother, who is waiting in the car.

  – Ya know, Mrs M., same ol’, same ol’.

  Judy laughs.

  – I hope not, she says. You promised you would practise this week.

  – Yes, Mrs Martello, Paulie says, his step losing some of its bounce.

  Judy lets him have a go at his piece, a simple little tune he’s been torturing for months now, and, as expected, it doesn’t go well.

  – Let’s try this, she says. We’ll sing it. I’ll sing first – lala lala laaa – now you …

  – La la la la la, Paulie intones miserably.

  – Lala lala laaa? Judy tries again.

  – La la la la la.

  Judy inhales, then slowly exhales. She was getting too old for this. If it wasn’t for Kane—

  – Clapping, she says. We’ll try clapping out the music, Paulie. It’s all about rhythm. Let’s go.

  But the clapping is a failure too. Judy glances at the clock. Too soon to let him out to his mother. She will have to have a chat with her one of these days.

  The piece is illustrated with lambs, frolicking on a hillside.

  – I know, Judy says. Colour. We will colour the picture.

  She lumbers to the sideboard to rummage for materials. Paulie gives her a cynical look, which changes to resignation when he, too, glances at the clock. To its too-slow, metronomic increments Paulie scratches away at the lambs with a crayon.

  – Thanks, Mrs M., Paulie calls, as he bounds down the steps.

  – Practise, Paulie, Judy says, as she waves him off.

  She is already distracted, looking up and down the road to see if there is any sign of Kane. His mother usually walks with him from Grand Station. Usually, they are there, waiting on the steps. They are never late.

  She goes back inside eventually, not wanting the neighbours to witness her anxious waiting. She’s wheezing again. Her inhaler – Where is it? Ah. She takes three puffs. She waits. She looks at the photograph on the piano, her beautiful mother looking at her father looking back at her as she plays. The only sounds in the front room come from the second hand of the clock, pressing relentlessly forward into the second half of Kane’s lesson, and the faraway whine of her own inhalations.

  Paprika

  Frank McGuinness

  If you were to put a gun to my head and demand I tell you what I believe to be the loveliest aria in all opera, I think I would surprise you. You could not guess my answer in a million years. I can hear obvious choices being recited. Perhaps you wo
uld be able to show off and tell me it is some hidden piece buried in an obscure work you chanced upon hearing in some little village festival you stumbled across in the wilds of Ireland or in the reclaimed wetlands of some Dutch province. Maybe I too came upon this wonderful gem and am sent here to agree with you, to confirm your choice, to prove that as in my own art there is fate, a force of destiny intent on bringing us together, we who share such an esoteric taste in beauty.

  You would be wrong to assume so. I take no pleasure in closing that gate to you. I do not allow you to enter, invited through to my room – make yourself comfortable, kick your shoes off, you know what we like to listen to in it. But you cannot be my welcome guest for you don’t have permission to come into my house, my company. I do not give you the key. I do not know who you might find prowling there, walking the feet off himself, tiring the day and night out of his limbs so that sleep might at least – a little sleep might even be possible. Who knows what exhausted breathing might follow your footsteps? Who might be on the very brink of expiring in your arms should you dare to cross my threshold? Better to be refused entry – to be denied any access. So, as I say, I do not give it to you and already I owe you an apology for misleading you.

  This is how I madden my friends. I make a statement that I am about to reveal something about myself – then I stand back at the last minute and say nothing. It is an appalling habit. Perhaps it accounts for my coldness. For why I rarely married. Women’s flesh now bores me, and men’s has always disgusted me. I live apart. I am honest enough to admit that I prefer the sound of my own voice. Am I alone in making clear that preference? When it comes to my voice, am I flattering myself when I say it is in demand? I shall not bore with the names of leading companies where I have performed and continue to perform. There is a type of singer whose list of roles is their sole topic of conversation. You can hear their soprano sweetness even as I accuse. A little of that company is sufficient. Whatever else may be made of my arrogance, I can argue I learned my lesson well from these ladies. I avoid talk about opera when I can.

  I admit this is because I find so few people capable of interesting me on the subject – they simply lack the verbal accuracy to speak with any degree of intelligence about music. It descends almost always into what I truly despise: gossip, which is all most criticism comes down to, if truth be told. The squalid daydreams of some silly queen longing to try on some diva’s frock, masquerading as the lush lyricism of a Puccini expert, dying to expire as Butterfly, pining onto death for his Pinkerton. Then there are the academics. The odour of pipes, the grey of their beards, the rot of their teeth and breath, the unreadable analysis, the technical mysticism, all of it hiding the deepest ignorance, all of it disguising the simple truth – they do not understand their subject. Inevitably, by their side, the not quite pretty girl or boy, accompanying the ageing master, ever ready for the ride, the kamikaze screw that will disfigure them for life, disfigure them sufficiently to take up the teaching profession.

  That is why I make a point of never thanking my teachers. I have been known to race from funeral services rather than to shake the hand of any one of them. I once risked nearly jumping into the open grave to avoid these creatures. I would certainly never go to any of their farewells. I did hear of a Jamaican professor whose relatives insisted his mourners, family and friends, his former pupils, actually dig the earth he was to lie in – I do not fancy dirtying my soft hands in that way. Certainly not for anyone who wasted my time and energy. They all know this. I have never received even a word of congratulations from that jealous shower. It is not that I need nor have looked for such encouragement. I presume my quote, made in an interview, deeply offended. I dared to say I succeeded despite them. Yes, I know it is the kind of predictable joke a clever schoolboy might crack. I was never acknowledged to be clever as a boy. I was never considered special in any way. My instrument was judged to be merely promising, and not especially so. There were fellows in my class who were expected to surpass me. They are now teaching beginners. So, if it were a juvenile insult, I am the happier for that. Really, do they need to take it so seriously? I heard – believe me, I so frequently heard – that I had hurt them. Well, it was my intention to do so. They might have believed that as I aged I would mellow and recover the modesty they had so abused in my childhood and teenage years, suffering under their complacency, learning what took me too many years to discard as utterly worthless in my pursuit of my full voice, my full soul and self. They could whistle for all I cared. Not my way, I’m afraid. Not my style.

  And what is that? I like perfection. And, to me, the perfect piece of music, the one I would most like to sing – it is in the very opera I came to deliver in the Big Apple. This is not my first Otello. I shall not reveal to you how many times I have sung it. It is obvious there are only so many performances one voice can despatch in that role. Suffice to say, I am not within spitting distance of that total. There is life in the old tar yet. It is imperative to let your Iago and Desdemona know this. You do so by allowing them to believe that for all your fame, your reputation, your stature, your size – you are a jolly fellow, you are a good sport. I tell them, truthfully, my favourite aria is the Willow Song, Desdemona’s pathetic cry before she is strangled, as she remembers a maid called Barbara, a girl martyred by a lover who has now deserted her and left her to go mad. I am naturally not alone in adoring Verdi’s genius as it caresses and disturbs me through that shattering lament. But there must be, I am sure, few celebrated tenors who for the amusement of their fellow troupers can sing it. It is quite extraordinary that now, in my hefty fifties, I can resort to a near parody of my boyhood’s beautiful voice – even the threatening break – the disfiguring – I can make an uncanny fist of it.

  Piangea cantando nell’erma landa,

  Piangea la meste.

  O Salce! Salce! Salce!

  Bravo, Iago praises. Brava, the conductor smiles to correct him. Desdemona throws back her golden hair and sings, ‘O willow, willow, willow!’ Does the silly bitch think I cannot translate salce? Then I speak, asking, as Desdemona does, who is knocking at the door? In ridiculous falsetto, Iago answers as Emilia does, ‘E il vento’, it is the wind. I resume my boyish brilliance.

  Io per amarlo e per morire.

  Cantiamo! Cantiamo!

  Salce! Salce! Salce!

  I eye Desdemona. I wait for her to translate. ‘I love him and I will die. Let us sing, let us sing, willow! willow! willow!’ I wait in vain. She is strangely quiet. She joins in the generous applause, but she alone knows I am not joking. She will perform this exquisite hymn to female weakness. The house will listen to a woman abandoned, perfectly pathetic. Then I will arrive on-stage, her ravager, her rope around the neck, the beautiful twist and chain of neck, the weeping face, the eyes darkening beneath the pillow. She will not fear that I might actually kill her. No, she will see in my own eyes, hear in my voice that I mock her. I have more regard for my mockery of the role than her sweet relish of its music. I would make a better Desdemona than she could ever sing, bound and big as I am, perfectly cast as Otello. It is my mission to destroy this woman, throttle her, leave her voice shattered, changed beyond recognition for the rest of her career. Desdemona is born to die, and I know how to do it, how to be her killer, sing her to death. That is my job. She knows it as well. That is why, when I finished my mimicking party piece, all through rehearsal, she never takes her eyes off me. So attentive is she to me, I am sure word must be spreading through the scandal-addicted orchestra and chorus, there is surely about our attentions all the signs that an affair is beginning.

  There isn’t. Our soprano was considered to be a beautiful woman, but I had tired of beauty. I had even begun to dislike it. This was when I was friends with a photographer – in those days I was not choosy. He could wield a camera like a butcher’s knife, cutting girls into glamorous glory, and yet the man was effectively a eunuch. He hated the female of the species. I was most fascinated in his many affairs when they were ending.
He would begin to remind these women incessantly that they were ageing. He was deeply in love with the speed of his vision. He would tell me in wonderful confidence when each love was on the point of collapse. He would start to profess to her that he had always confused love with sorrow. The women would begin to receive a rose that had started to wither. It would be delivered at exactly the right instant of her discontent with him. Then he would vanish from her life. Vanish completely, even though he’d tied the knot with a few.

  All right, I was that man. In those days I did dabble with a camera. But I had no ambitions there. I shared the secrets of my love life to a sympathetic couple in their restaurant – Hungarian – where I would eat alone, scorning any company but that man and his wife. She was first to notice I’d put on a little weight. But my voice was improving as my girth was gaining. For a man who loathed cliché, this one of the fat tenor I actually enjoyed. Still, she advised me not to grow too heavy. She passed on to me an old Danube secret. Sprinkle paprika, as much paprika as you can tolerate, on everything you eat. That controls your diet. You will eat less. Again, it had the opposite effect on me. I had found my addiction, my potion, my elixir. I could not get enough of it. Smear a chicken with paprika. Inside and outside. The flesh cooks like the sun. I’d devour it. The spice seemed to break into my bones, my blood, my brain, into my singing, so that it burned with warmth, it loved the sound of itself, it healed the sick and the lame, it fed the multitude of five thousand after five thousand, and had plenty left to feed five thousand more. I had never tasted such a dish. Had never enjoyed such success. Place a plate of an entire bird, a feast of chicken paprika – its breasts, its legs, its wings – I will eat it in one sitting, and for my supper I will find notes of such fulfilment, music of such thanks, a voice you will drink like the reddest, purest wine, quench your thirst with the sweetest, most fragrant white. And I can do this with the lovely, natural means of paprika – doses of paprika – my spice, my drug, my magic. I could not do without it. The food, the weight suited me. Yes, I grew, so did my art. Music more and more marvellous. Offers more and more frequent. Roles increasing in demand. Paprika – it did me no harm whatsoever. I sang my soul – I do believe a singer must bare his soul. Blacks are right to call their music soul. Although they weren’t black, the boy and girl, lying on Fifth Avenue, making strange moan.