by Mark Helprin
He set up in a small apartment overlooking the Champ de Mars and on the first day of autumn when the returning population was in full frenzy, in a copper-colored bar where he stopped early in the morning to drink chocolate and eat pieces of buttered bread which he paid for as he took them one by one off a round plate, as the streets were washed down and men in blue coats streamed in and out, he looked across the room to a bank of sunny windows where the white dusty light was coming in on Shannon and made her look like an Irishwoman in a Sargent portrait.
Because she was so beautiful in her enlightened posture and expression, and because an intelligence radiated from her, he became very daring and approached the table, cup of chocolate in hand, a beautiful leather briefcase under one arm. He said, “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”at which she smiled and then laughed, because if they had been two Texas longhorns standing there in the corner of the cafe it could not have been more obvious that both were Americans; the fact was like water pouring over a dam. They went out and walked away hours. His daring began to extend itself for a year’s tenure. He fell in love with her, having the peculiar feeling which new kisses can bring, an overwhelming sense of being alive in the face of the present. The world became an energetic frame. It was almost like being the leading man in an opera. Within a week she had moved two wicker trunks into his apartment. She did ballet exercises in the middle of the floor while they talked. She could not have told him that the first night when they walked up the Champs Elysees and basked in the lights and September fountains, a red-bearded Rumanian architect sat staring at her former bed and cursed himself in Hungarian, French, and English, and eventually threw a glass full of Scotch flat up against the wall.
And then she disappeared each morning and came back only after dark, having danced every day down to exhaustion. Harry was writing music, at which he was becoming masterful, in which he was beginning to be able to do anything he wanted. By terrifying bouts of sustained work he was forcing the creation of a great bed of experience, so that in the strong frame and healthy body of his twenties could be found an old man who had lived since the turn of the century, and whose wisdom at the craft astounded and amazed even competitors and the nearly deaf. He could write pieces as deep and blue as a fjord, echoing and quiet, and he could write as red as he pleased, American jazz born of a rich heartland and the death of the wilderness. And strangely, the better he got, the better he got, with no chance of slipping. This stood even Shannon in awe. Once he had said, I can do anything, absolutely anything. I am almost a master, and she had looked mean and tough and said, You can do nothing, leaving the room in a fit of envy which meant he could have her for at least another six months until their powers evened out again and she was able to glide and swirl naturally and gracefully beyond the ecstatic points to which his labor had taken him. But he was going farther, and they both knew it.
Winter passed. They had an enormous electricity bill, for the lights burned late at night, with Harry bearing down on his blinding white music pads and then touching the piano as if he were stroking a horse. Shannon danced and danced, slept from exhaustion, and danced again, becoming like Harry one of the ones who did not return in quiet and sadness to the starting point with a series of exquisite memories and some first editions. She danced at the National Theater. His pieces were really performed. Sometimes he conducted, in a light gray and blue tweed suit and his tortoise-shell glasses, and when he turned at the close and faced an approving audience, their feet stamping, the timbers of the hall shaking as if the earth had quaked, it threw him off balance for weeks during which he stuffed himself with good food and could write only music which was so squeaky it sounded like rusty wheels in the high Gare du Nord, music which if played for the pigeons would have made them rise in intolerance and bend in a sheet of white and gray across the plane of Paris sky.
And he ran in the afternoon amid the blue which met buildings softly under the clouds, panting, pushing his glasses back on his face as they tried to fall to the ground. Eventually he built a routine of going all the way out to Neuilly and back, and as he got stronger it wrote Shannon in for another few months, for she could love only strength and could not face weakness. But it was so hard, to run and write, to eat like a beast and then starve, to make love until the dawn and then be fit only for the morgue, to be moved so by the music that it was like an electrocution, complete surrender and exhaustion.
That summer they went to Greece. The winter’s rain seemed as far away as medieval European cities, and yet it was in one of these cities that Harry wrote in thundering clear classical style. He took the opportunity to take down good Greek music, and to write barrelhouse rolls to limericks they made up. These became extremely popular at a restaurant in Nea Epidavros called “Yellow House of Nonsensical Pleasure” where the foreigners gathered in the evenings. Of several dozen Swedes, Englishmen, French, Greeks, Americans, and Italians, three had birthdays on the same day, two (including Harry) had perfect pitch, all knew the fountain at Aix-en-Provence (or said they did), and everyone except the women except one was in love with Shannon—as if drawn into the maelstrom; the bright challenge took them up in its hands like moths.
Harry and Shannon slept on the roof; a phonograph played them to sleep. As they watched the stars they became separate. Harry knew she was in love with the doctor, an Oklahoman who had been broken in Vietnam and then come back stronger. He was both larger and wiser than Harry, although he could not compose music, and he called Harry “Spence.” Next to him Harry felt like a young midget, and because he was not fresh or new at Shannon’s game he lost early on in the subtle war of deferences at the Yellow House of Nonsensical Pleasure. Harry retired to the piano and played his barrelhouse rolls, and then stopped going there altogether, and then Shannon did not come up to the roof.
He cursed himself for not having the wisdom war brings. His father had told him of lying awake in an open meadow with an automatic rifle across his lap, waiting for the enemy while the sky was filled with artillery flashes and the white lightning of battle, a terror which numbed the little patrol in the field, something Harry might never know. It was one of the major reasons Harry loved his father, his sense early on that the man knew terror and bloodshed, and was grateful and loving just to be alive. They, the men in his family who had started out as merchants and professors and been made into warriors, knew something he could not. But they envied him for his cradle of peace. There was no way to compete with the Oklahoman, with the bronzed face and tranquil eyes which had seen men die in war. Harry was at a loss but determined to push with the same energy which had led them to survive, toward a depth in peace they could never know. He too was a fighter of sorts. To take in the whole great compass of the world—this was his task. The expanse of it could kill, and he had to dodge as best he could the potent backlash of music’s ecstasy. He left for Paris precipitously, almost without thinking or looking back, and when he arrived he forwarded Shannon her wicker trunks, wondering what she would do with twenty-five pairs of dancing shoes in a wild rocky spine of the Peloponnesus. She had written that if she returned she would meet him at the Jeu de Paume at five o’clock on October 27, the day after her ticket expired.
It was already five-thirty. He could smell roasting chestnuts. He was in his light gray and blue suit, and he carried the leather briefcase under his arm. It was filled with musical manuscripts he had written since his return from Greece. He was steady, slept soundly, spoke softly, and smiled more. He was older, and felt like his father, enjoying little things. His desk looked more chestnut-colored, and the bright lights of autumn were sharper than they had ever been. He knew now who was good, and he knew he was good. Massive clouds made the dark come early. Cold lightnings could be seen far north of Paris. High in the air birds rode thermals, tiny white flecks against the gray clouds. He loved the cool air, and looked up and down the paths, but they were emptying and the leaves just rustled on the floor of the Tuileries as if they were a German forest. That night he would sit under his lamp
and pen the blinding white sheets; every day he felt himself rising a little higher, quietly, powerfully He jumped off the railing and walked toward the Champs Elysees. He was due at dinner with a friend whose sister was to be there. He was in the Ministry of Finance and she was a model who had appeared on the covers of Match, Jours de France, and Elle. One evening Harry had been in a restaurant alone and had stared at her picture, feeling himself fall into a trance somehow allied to the sweet darkness outside. My God, he said, as his heart opened to her image. The serenity was numbing. He found himself walking with quick step as a winter wind came down the Champs Elysees.
He passed a tall girl with a beret. That bittersweet frame and the cold rushing air, the leaves like percussion, made him shudder. His friend's sister had deep blue eyes and on the cover of Elle she had been wearing a blue velvet gown. He knew he would be loving her soon, in the quiet of autumn, smooth, silent, and blue.
MOUNTAIN DANCING IN TRUCHAS
A FASHION in New Mexico was mountain dancing, which was called that because it started in small villages in the North up high in the mountains. Rarely were there clouds in Truchas. Farther on toward Truchas Peak were thick forests with clear steady streams. Perpetually terrified of bears, cattle roamed the mountains, meek beasts who looked with fear even at one another and at birds, and who at the slightest noise would crash through the thick brush and run until they dropped—because like young children in the dark they feared their own sounds.
Mountain dancing was not a form of dancing but rather just dancing on a Friday night. Couples would come, and if not couples then people alone. And they often brought their children. Josie brought her children because they were little enough to fear the moon and the night silence over the desolate black and white hillsides. They played in the corner with several other little children, some of whom were in bathrobes. All moved much faster because of the music, although they did not themselves know it.
Josie was tall and brown. Around her wrists were bracelets of dull silver studded with blue stones. This work of the Southwest was nothing when compared to her eyes; her eyes, black and Persian against the red clay and outstanding clear green of the trees. When she held her hand, fingers spread, over her breast so that the tips of her nails reached nearly to her neck, it was possible to see her eyes reflected in her bracelets, and the silver and turquoise were also to be seen in the wet blue-black of her eyes, although not as well.
She danced the best of all the women in Truchas, and better than the unattached girls. Dancing was a matter of pride and slow movements, of watching a wall or window while in the mind there was soaring and flying over silver mountain ranges, standing up rigid with the wind and rain rushing by as if around an upright Christ. The more ecstasy, the more stillness. That is why they started with much movement and the pine floor rocked, resinous, yellow, and dusty. At evenings end very little was left of motion, for everything was contained, and the wind whistling over the roof made the women shudder with love. But Josie was alone, for her husband had died in the army. She had considered other men even before the time of mourning had passed, because she had loved him so much, and chose to start when she wished since she would never allow herself to be a horse breaking at the bit, and her legitimate pride made her seek others as an exercise in grief.
He had been in the First Cavalry. He was Spanish, from Truchas for many generations, mixed with the dying Indians. He had the same dark eyes, and he had killed many men before he himself was killed in a helicopter crash.
She did love him, more so when he was dead, and she had loved him in that cold way which is the great love of one who is hurt. But then, there were wonderful clear moments, all lightness and gaiety, such as one time when they walked for miles down the road in the moonlight just laughing and relieved that they had nowhere to go and were completely alone.
When he died she learned much and she became more protective of her children. She became then not a girl but a woman. There are ways in which a woman becomes a woman; they often take her by great surprise, and this was one. It seemed to her that she valued her own life a little less, and life itself much more. She became devoted to her children and would have made sacrifices for them of which a year or even a few months before she would not have dreamed. She felt old, but very strong, and when old people went by in the street she understood them more, and was proud of them.
One Friday night in the summer there was mountain dancing. Josie was there. She and her children had been escorted by the man who guided hunters from the East, and spent much time alone in the mountains. People were somewhat afraid of him because he was so strong and was seldom in the village, but at the same time they were happy to have him because they guessed that he would fight hard for them if for any reason they had to fight. Josie was enlivened by his company because he was so much older. It seemed to her girlfriends, whom she had already outdistanced, that he was frightening and somehow beyond understanding. It was an important time for her. She was learning to change her sadness into a tenderness which made itself manifest on nights just like these. The pain had withered to a point of beauty, and she was receptive and full of love.
When things began to go and she stared no longer at the black glass through which were tinted stars and shapes of peaks, when in fact she was eating a lemon ice and talking convivially with her friends and a young boy who had come up from Santa Fe to work for the summer on his cousins farm, two men came in, two strangers. They smiled occasionally but seemed not to have come for the dance.
Josie began dancing with the hunter, who was a good dancer. A time passed while she danced and was very happy. Then, when the musicians rested, the two men went to the middle of the floor and asked for attention. In Truchas no one had to ask for attention. If he wanted to speak to the people all at once, he spoke. These young men were from California, their Spanish was not the same, and they said they were revolutionaries. One spoke, and then the other said that what he said was true. They talked of fighting, and guns, and violence. And they mentioned many times “the people.” They talked for half an hour, and when they finished there was silence in the room. The hunter was unimpressed, and smiled at them as if they were children who knew very little. What did they know of the mountains, of the peaks? They were from the flat land and not accustomed to the thin air. The other people were puzzled, and did not understand fully what they had said or why.
But Josie tightened her lips and tensed herself to stop the shaking. She was furious, and looked at the children in the corner and gathered her own with her eyes. With her head held high and the tendons in her long slim arms raised, she stepped out a pace and challenged the two young men. She threw back her black hair.
What did they know, she said, about Truchas, about mountain country. A few years ago a man from the army had come and convinced her husband to fight, making him believe that he would be fighting for himself and for his children. “These are his children,” she said, sweeping her arm toward the now still babies stacked in the arms of older women who had taken them up. “They are there and quite alive and do not need to be fought for. Their father is dead because of men like you. You are not revolutionaries. There is nothing new about you. You are the leaders of men and the slaughterers of men. I myself have seen you pass through this village before, and I will not be fooled a second time.”
The hunter stepped forward, but Josie waved him back. With the eyes of a lioness she looked at the two men and she was full of rage. On this the night when she began to learn how to make life whole again, they had come to tear it apart. She would not let these men take her children as they had taken her husband. She would fight all right, she would fight for herself, she said, because she was the people. “And it is time,” she said, “that all the people learn to fight just for themselves, and not for anyone but themselves. Truchas remains here, and you will leave. Pass on. Leave us.” The young men began to argue, saying first that they understood her feelings...
“You do not understand,” she sai
d. The Mayor, a little old man with a pink face and only one good eye, said politely that Friday night was for mountain dancing, and that if the two young men wished they could come to the same place on any first day of the month and air their views at the town meeting. He asked them very cordially if they would like to dance, at which the previously silent hall exploded with laughter, and all the people of Truchas laughed for a long time. And then they ate, and when the musicians started to play they danced, and that night many would make love and some only dream of it, and on the morrow herd cattle and chop wood, and the hunter would again disappear into the mountains.
Josie danced with tears in her eyes. Her bracelets jangled and she was happy and full of love. The two young men started the long walk down to Santa Fe.
LEAVING THE CHURCH
“I HAVE never been as calm in my life,” said Father Trelew. “No, not ever.” He was speaking to Helen, his housekeeper, but she was not much in his mind, even though she had been with him for several years—he could not remember exactly how many. He looked at the sky. “Soon I will be on the plane to New York, and then to Rome.”