by Nancy Young
“Per il mío caro Tomás” was written in a shaky but florid hand across the top of the first page. The affectionate address was nearly obliterated by the yellowing and recent dampness, but contained a lifetime of sentiment within its five small words, written by an unstable but loving hand. Who wrote this piece of music and why was it dedicated to this man, Tomás? Was he a beloved husband or brother? A son perhaps? Bernard looked to the antique guitar standing guard in the corner of his studio. He must have owned this instrument. Was he the man playing in my dream?
•
Bernard replied to Lorraine’s letter several days later and informed her that he would visit her in Québec if that fit in with her schedule. The days and nights that intervened between the writing of the letter and the careful preparation for his wintry traverse of the Haut Saint-François to the City were painfully slow. He imagined the train gathering passengers from New York en route to Montréal, making a minor collection of travelers there from Sherbrooke, and then on to Québec. He was prepared a week before departure, the late December air crisp and frosted with ice and snow shaken from the tops of the bare maples as he stumbled from his porch to the path leading to the frozen lake.
Christmas with his family at the Tenderfield home was filled with the prattle of young nieces and nephews, cousins and aunts, and the detached observation of the growing brood by grandparents now in their retirement years, and showing the wear and tear of nearly forty years of minding the mill. In the corner of the living room stood a six-foot Douglas fir decorated with the fine shreds of silver tinsel and red glass baubles collected over nearly four decades of Christmases by three generations. An assortment of presents nestled under the tree like a well-tended garden of delights. The crackling roar of the inferno blazing in the stone-lined fireplace stoked the excited chatter of children, and its visual fireworks created a focal point to which all eyes were drawn as they gathered for the opening of presents.
Spared the relentless and increasingly boisterous prattle of the young ones, Bernard sat unperturbed like a Buddha on the hearthside rug. His contentment glowed like a well-oiled lantern when the wide-eyed squeals of delight from the children peaked with his every gift-wrapped offering. Without delay they were scattered about the living room, a menagerie of finely carved fantastical animals, wooden spinning tops inlaid with intricate designs, and an astoundingly clever toddler’s push-cart.
One of the hand-crafted guitars was propped against a wall beside him, unwrapped but fitted with a small card and gleaming warmly in the glow of the fire. It had gone unnoticed in the maelstrom of gifts and baubles until now. In its physical microcosm of air, light, and cellulose, it held tight the many trials and tribulations of Bernard’s recent past. No one in the room could possibly guess what he had undergone to retrieve the source of its timber manifestation or the mystical notations that drove him to discover it. They were secrets that he kept under the surface of his ever-beatific smile and silent gaze. Or how, with a tyrannical largess, the towering pines had opened their branching staircases out to him like a hymn or a mantra to his evanescing search for lightness and meaning. Not easily giving up the secrets of their formidable cult, the roiling rapids had also, with their constant troubling toil, dealt him an unduly harsh hand, but he played well, plunging his embattled oars into the waters with little or no fear, and winning the unfair match with absolute fierceness.
Ellen did not guess for a minute that the present before her was a trophy. As she looked upon it, the glossy beautifully varnished instrument seemed to have a life all its own. It breathed faintly and emitted a low sonorous sigh as if its rounded curves shouldered sadness within it. Through her increasingly far-sighted eyes she made out the words which flowed before her in a swirling unfamiliar hand, and read them out loud.
Music and silence within this timber contain
Treasured for a lifetime in moments declared
The solace of tenderness in tempered refrain
Love, much happiness, of sadness repaired.
With a pure heart planted this fruit of my labor
Indebted to you, your care, kindness forever;
Beholden to life so fierce benighted
Once alone now with kinship requited.
“This is lovely,” she said facing her son. “But who wrote this poem?” Bernard understood the wonderment in his mother’s face. He had penned the words earlier that morning as he gathered the gifts. The poem seemed to come through the pen from a source within him that he had no control of. And now as it was read in the jostling backdrop of grandchildren and a roaring fire, the message was like a great ship sailing silently through rough and tumble waves. He gestured to his mother with his hand to his chest, I did.
“Oh!” she exclaimed with surprise, and then was stunned into a silence as the enormity of it struck upon her. It seemed her adopted son had suddenly transformed into a sixteenth-century poet. A cool stream of air breezed past her left arm and as if in counterpoint to her surprised cry, which still hung in the air, the guitar sounded in a low harmonizing bass. Ellen and Bernard turned to look at the instrument and then each other. In innocent collusion their eyes met and they both turned simultaneously toward Col, who was standing with the black iron poker in the enormous fire and his back turned. Apparently no sound had disturbed his concentrated efforts at stoking the already raging fire.
“Bernie,” Ellen finally said, signing the words as best she could as she spoke them, “this is extraordinary. This guitar is exquisite. I didn’t know you were making instruments now. How did you learn to do it?”
It came to me in a dream, was all he said, signing the words to his mother in the abbreviated language they shared. His placid facial expression flashed momentarily with a nearly imperceptible flicker of anguish and pain, but gave away none of the ordeal of nearly a year ago when the dreams tormented and tantalized him in equal measure. Nor did they suggest the physical hardship he endured at his own conquest of nature to salvage the colossal timber. His obsession of the past nine months however was metaphysical and inexplicable. The old manuscript revealed itself in surges of elucidation during waking dreams for which the whir of his saws and planers seemed to provide a perpetual vibrational frequency that powered the visions.
“You know what is even more extraordinary — that you somehow knew that I played the guitar? You couldn’t have known, but before I married your father, I grew up in quite a musical family in Boston, filled with Christmas carols by the fireside — with me on the guitar, my mother on the piano, and my sister Rose on the violin. Rose became a rather successful violinist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.”
It is the work of my love and I hope you will cherish it, he replied.
“I will. In fact, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, Bernie,” she began in a conspiratorial whisper. Whether it was because he had lost his hearing quite young, or whether he was just the baby of her clan, Ellen felt the closest to her adopted son. They were kindred spirits of sorts and she felt then, as now, that he understood her even without words. Before her this gentle giant of a young man stood, with eyes that melted hearts and a smile that turned heads against their will. Where did the source of the verse come from?
As a small boy he was fascinated by books and volumes of poems by the English poets — John Donne, Milton, Eliot, Keats, and Browning — but she never guessed that her words were anything more than a monotonous vibrational hum in his inner ear. She looked into his face, his knowing head tilted to one side and his lips slightly parted as if in mid-sentence, waiting patiently and attentively for her secret. The yellowish glow of the fireplace danced a light and shadow play on his chiseled jaw, casting a roguish gleam on his otherwise boyish face. She could have sat silently for hours just staring into his fine and familiar face.
“Your father and I are considering taking up a missionary post in Thailand next year,” she finall
y said. “Now that you and your brothers are all settled down, and all the grandchildren are growing so well, we thought it might be time to do something important in our lives. Your father is growing very restless in his retirement.”
A look of surprise and relief overtook his calmly patient visage as he whispered, “When will you decide for certain? Have you told the others?”
“Only John and Judith,” she replied. “It was her suggestion in the first place, and through her close work with the Ministry and Father Lesley, we were selected amongst quite a few applicants across Canada. We will announce it to everyone when we decide for certain; probably early in the New Year. I wanted to make sure you were all right with it.”
“Of course it is all right. You and Papa have always done important things in your lives,” he signed. “I am happy for you. You must take the guitar with you.”
Ellen rose out of her chair and put her arms around her youngest son. There they stood embraced for a long while, as if it was already a parting. Feeling that it might be the last time her boy needed her for comfort, she drew back and lifted the guitar and held it in her arms like the small sleeping child he no longer was. She moved with it over to the fire to hold it more clearly in the light, and to tell her husband of over forty-five years her revelation.
“You might think you know someone, and then one day they surprise you with the most astonishing gift you didn’t know was possible.”
The older man looked at her questioningly. “Ehh?” he muttered, still preoccupied with turning over a flaming log to create a more even burn across it. “Is that your new Christmas present from Bernie?”
“Yes. It’s for both of us really,” she answered.
“It will make a fine decoration. Warm this room up a bit.” Absently Col hoisted another log onto the fire with the iron tongs and poked prodigiously until it settled neatly into an infernal niche between the glowing embers. “He’s got real talent, that boy,” he continued. The new addition refused to absorb the inevitable flames, its timber striped black and unyielding against the ephemeral orange radiance of the well-contained blaze.
And then, whether it was in his ear or just in his mind, he thought he heard the guitar make an incredibly subtle and spine-tingling melody as his wife cradled it upright, facing outward in her arms like a small papoose strapped to the chest of a native Indian woman working in a field. Her clasped hands had not moved from their position supporting the lower curves of the body, but the blur of strings was undeniable. His eyes moved suspiciously from the strings to her hands, then to her expression. They met an incredulous smile and a wide-eyed look reflecting his own on the woman’s face.
•
Bernard found himself jostled along by a crowd of harried travelers herding baggage and uncooperative children along to their proper carriages at the train platform in Sherbrooke, which swarmed with holiday traffic. It was the afternoon of the last day of the year and there was little decorum left once the train’s powerful engines and the whistle had fired, letting passengers know it was time to say the last farewell, grab the children, and board the vehicle. Vehement white steam fissuring from the steam-chute above the engine gave final warning of the impending departure, causing agitated travelers to become even more so. The young man was grateful for the lightness of his load; he had almost no luggage except for the efficient leather guitar case he had strapped across his shoulder.
En route to the elevated old fort city, he watched impassively as the landscape rushed past in the large square of his carriage window. In the glass-enclosed cabin he shared with a boisterous Glaswegian family visiting relatives in Canada, and an elderly nun in a light gray habit who sat directly across from him reading a bible opened on her lap, Bernard dozed off on a few occasions between being awakened again by a loud cry from one of the small tartan-bedecked children. Every few minutes the nun glanced furtively in his direction with a mutter under her breath. She found him alternately asleep or looking dolefully through the small circle of clarity in the window made by his ungloved hand. She seemed to be recounting an event or perhaps a prayer in her mind and his presence was a reminder.
The train progressed slowly as it made its way through the icy winter landscape. A frozen backdrop of snowy white drifts, patches of blue-gray ice, and prickly bare tree branches met his gaze everywhere he turned. In its monotony the countryside was most beautiful, stretching into infinity as anonymously and indiscriminately as an eternity. All that frozen whiteness made him feel at home, and yet he nearly quaked in awe at its sheer vastness. Looming up ahead, a stone church presented itself: a boldly upright steeple, its sides too vertical for the snow’s blanketing grip but its beige serenity at one with the softly molded surrounds of blended whites.
The children in the carriage had no qualms with the colorlessness of the scenery; they squealed and squawked with delight at each spotted landmark as if discovering a treasure at every turn. Ice skaters making circling figure-eights on a frozen lake in the distance were colorful marching ants, while a lone barn sheathed in white — bar the small patch of blood red beneath the shallow eaves of its slanting roof — was a witch’s hideout. To them the wintry playground was as richly hued as a summer landscape with castles and lochs among its heath.
Bernard closed his eyes and imagined the same magical landscape in the summer colors of emerald and pine green, the red barn a beacon in the sea of green and sky blue. He pictured his cabin sheathed in a thick blanket of snow and with the brushstroke of his imagination brought it to life in living color: warm timber logs, a black pitched roof, red-breasted robins bobbing along the painted blue rail on his veranda, an explosion of pink and white blossoms on the apple and peach trees in the small orchard behind the house. He imagined Lorraine standing on that verandah in her thin nightgown, a ceramic mug of coffee in her cupped hands and a radiant look of love on her beautiful face.
In the darkness behind his curtained eyes, and beneath his seat the rhythmic vibration of the train was soothing and persistent, but inevitably led to thoughts of another rhythmic motion. Immediately his body reacted to the memory with the gesticulating heat of a forward-thrusting steam train. He placed his open hand and cheek upon the cold misty windowpane and the icy shock pinched and drew out the heat in the other part of his body almost instantaneously. He imagined her completely covered in the thick layers of winter from head to toe like an Eskimo maiden, her light brown eyes peering out at him with an impish glint.
He wondered how she would look when he presented the guitar to her. Would she be incredulous like his mother had been? The vibrations of the strings when he plucked them felt good, not dissimilar to the sensation of the antique guitar, but whether its music was adequate to the job was lost on him. He would read her face and measure her reaction. If it proved to be unsatisfactory, he had another gift to present to her, a circular wooden box he had fashioned out of cherry-wood and maple, its round lid carved with an elegant design of intertwining vines. Inside was a poem that again had soared out of his pen like an eagle in full flight. Together, the guitar, box and poem were nestled inside the case on the open luggage rack, hanging over his head like unfinished business, and he grew annoyed with the slow progress of the train, wishing it would not stop and linger at each insignificant station as it did. It was not often that the laconic young man was impatient, but on this night he was anxious to see whether her face would be marked by delight or indifference.
He was confident the intricate gifts would be appreciated; he was less sure if she would be ready for his appearance at her apartment door. She had not replied to his letter informing of his decision to visit on New Year’s Eve, but he attributed that to the fact that he had written her just over a week before Christmas. The holiday post was unpredictable and there was no other way he could contact her before his arrival. He was prepared to find a taxi cab to deliver him to her address if she was not at the station, and fate would decide w
hether she would be at home on his arrival.
The train entered the grand old Du Palais Station in Québec a mere twenty minutes after it was scheduled to arrive. It was the final day of the year and despite the snow and freezing temperatures, the train slipped into the station platform like a metallic silver limousine arriving at a red carpet event, bells and lights flashing as the evening bustle of the busy station greeted the arriving travelers. He alighted on the platform with his case in hand and scanned the crowd for a familiar face. Lovers and friends re-uniting for the year’s last festivity greeted his searching glances and several wished him a happy new year. He nodded his head at the well-wishers, and to himself observed with a furtive smile that hardly a soul standing sober now would be doing so in four or five hours’ time.
Slowly advancing along the platform to the stairs that led down into the bowels of the station, Bernard kept up his search for the woman he ached to see, hoping that fate would be on his side this night, particularly in this unfamiliar site. A last glance behind him brought him face to face with her. Her open arms were a welcome sight and they embraced with urgency so familiar. Finally disengaged from the embrace he guessed that her rosy cheeks were flushed from having raced through the crowded station in search of him, dark brown locks falling around her face loosened from the beige wool cap adorned with delicate white snowflakes pulled down over her arched eyebrows.
Exiting the station, she hailed the taxi which brought them home to her apartment in the old city beneath the towering shadow of Le Château, high on the fortified hill overlooking the grand St.-Laurent. The old silver Citroën raced around icy corners and up the precipitous streets of old Québec before edging into a narrow alleyway of two windowless brick walls facing off in the half-cast darkness of the gas street lamps. The snow in the alley was thick and hard-packed; several other cars sat boxed in neatly by it. Inside her small apartment on the third floor of the solid old brownstone building, the glow of the gas lamps through the expansive bay windows combined with the warmth of the large rumbling radiator provided a romantic ambiance as the two bundled themselves into the welcoming living room.