by Jane Langton
“Oh, well,” said Homer mournfully. “It was pretty bad.” He shook his head and stood back as Ratchit bounced out of the hearse and ran around the front of the car.
John Campbell was there to meet him. “Hello, Ratchit,” he said. “You’re early. They’re not through taking pictures yet. You want to come back this afternoon?”
“No, it’s all right. I’ll wait.” Ratchit had a small sharp face. He bounded ahead of John Campbell up the stairs, snapping under his feet glass fragments bearing the names of the virtues, fallen from the rose window high above: Fortitudo, Disciplina, Prudentia, Patientia.
Chapter Five
He was back in New Jersey. Although he didn’t know how he knew it was New Jersey, because all the lights were out. But it must be New Jersey, because his great-aunts were lined up in a row beside him, singing. Oh, they were terrible. Oh, why didn’t they stop? Oh, Christ, it hurt his head to listen. He had thought at first they were angels, only angels wouldn’t sing like that, and when he had got a look at them by the light of the candles in their hands, he could see immediately that they were his old great-aunts, the ones in the picture on the bureau, back home in New Jersey. He had never met them in real life, because they had all died before he was born, but now they were all lined up just like in the picture, with their fuzzy hair and their shirtwaists and high collars and their staring faces, singing ROCK OF AGES, CLEFT! FOR MEEEEEEEE! LET ME HIIIIIIIDE MYSELF IN THEEEEEEEEE! Oh, God, why didn’t they stop?
Chapter Six
From the sidewalk on the other side of Kirkland Street, Homer Kelly looked up solemnly at the sunless north façade of Memorial Hall. The building rose above him like a cliff face, mass piled upon mass, ten thousand of brick laid upon ten thousand. It was ugly. Majestically ugly. Augustly, monumentally ugly. It was a red-brick Notre Dame, a bastard Chartres, punctured with stained-glass windows, ribboned around with lofty sentiments in Latin, finialed with metallic crests and pennants, knobbed with the heads of orators, crowned with a bell tower and four giant clocks. Homer knew that the colossal edifice contained a theatre and a great hall and a memorial transept and a lecture room and a radio station and a lot of small offices and classrooms, but now in its gloomy grandeur it was a gigantic mausoleum as well. When it had been erected in the 1870s it had been intended as a half-secular, half-sacred memorial to young graduates who had died in the Union cause in the Civil War. Now it was an actual coffin.
Some of the people on the sidewalk had stopped to stare across the street because they were merely curious, glad of some excitement between a class in Nat Sci 4 and another in Soc Sci 2. But most of the people pressed up against the rope barrier were mourners. Homer listened while Ham Dow’s students and choristers and friends murmured bitterly among themselves. A large woman in a red dress was weeping, clutching two fat boys in her arms. Mr. Crawley, the custodian of the building, was repeating his impressions of the morning over and over again. “Jeez, you should of seen him. His head was blowed right off. Blood running out of him down the hole. You should of been there.”
A short girl standing in front of Homer gave Crawley a savage look. “Oh, shut up, Crawley.”
But he gabbled on. “Hey, lookit. See that big car? That’s Cheever, President Cheever. He was here yesterday. Jeez, if they’d of blown up the place yesterday they’d of blown up Cheever. You see that other guy with him? That’s whooseywhatsis. Tinker. Sloan Tinker. Vice President or something. Excuse me, I think they’re going to need me over there. It’s all right, officer, I’m the super. I got all the keys. They can’t unlock nothing without the keys.”
“Oh, Homer, there you are.” Homer’s wife was reaching around shoulders and over heads, touching his arm. He took her hand and squeezed it. Someone was trailing after Mary, hanging on to her. Homer recognized the girl who had arrived on the scene of the disaster just as he was rushing upon it himself. And he had talked to her, he remembered now, before his class had even begun. Earlier this morning she had been a thin, handsome girl with long hair pouring over her shoulders in a violent mass of red. Now she was tear-stained, rumpled and pale, her hair hanging in lank dripping strands over her shirt.
“Homer, this is Vick Van Horn,” said Mary. “She was Ham Dow’s assistant. She’s really pretty shaken up.”
“Well, hello again,” said Homer. “I know Vick. She found my classroom for me this morning. Here, just let me speak to Officer Corcoran, so he’ll know where I am. Come on, we’ll find someplace to sit down.”
There was a bench in the garden of the Busch-Reisinger Museum. The three of them sat down, with Vick stiffly erect in the middle. “Oh, it’s so terrible,” she said, thumping one skinny fist into the other hand. “Oh, of all the people in the world. Ham was one of the few people in the whole world who were doing anything good for anybody else. He meant so much to so many people—with his music, I mean. He was the best. He really was. And now he’s gone. Oh, I can’t stand it. I just can’t stand it.”
Homer didn’t know what to say. “There now,” he said, “don’t cry. There now.”
“Oh, Homer, don’t be an idiot,” said Mary. “Of course she should cry. And she’s right. She really is. Even I could see that. I’d only been singing with him twice, at my audition and then this morning, but I could tell he was just what Vick says. He was one of those people who are just born to teach. He was—well, he was just great. Well, I’m going to bawl a little myself.” Mary put her arms around Vick, and Homer sat helplessly while the two women leaned on each other and sobbed. But then Vick stopped crying and jumped up and began gesticulating with her thin, freckled arms. “I mean, it wasn’t just the music. It was the way he was so, you know, kind to everybody. Once—you won’t believe this—once I found him leaning down over a manhole in the street, and there was this man with his head sticking up out of the manhole, and they were singing this really corny old song, ‘Silver Threads Among the Gold,’ only it was beautiful, it really was. Funny and beautiful. They were both throwing themselves into it. It was just the way he was. He couldn’t even be mean enough to turn anybody down who wanted to sing. He was always getting himself in trouble by letting some really strange people into the chorus. He was just so kind.”
“That’s right,” said Mary. “He let me in, and I was surprised. I mean, I’m just a visiting teacher, really old, compared to the rest of you. And I don’t even sing all that well. I didn’t think I’d pass the test. But he said it was all right. Of course, there are still the quartet trials to get through. I may not get in after all.”
“Well, everybody would get in, if we left it up to Ham. So the quartet trials have to be taken care of by other people. I do some and Jack Fox does the rest. He’s the accompanist and the manager. Even so, Ham slips some really weird people in behind our backs. Oh, excuse me, I didn’t mean you. Oh, damn. Oh, excuse me. Oh, God, I just can’t believe it. To think we were working in there, all together, just an hour ago, in Sanders Theatre, and Ham was making a joke about my shirt.”
“Your shirt?” said Homer.
“It’s got stripes, you see?” Vick threw out her arms to display her shirt. “And he said, ‘What a nice shirt,’ and then he sang the first line of that chorus from Messiah, you know—”
“And with his stripes”—Mary laughed—“we are healed.”
“Right. That’s right. I mean, he was just so … Who would want to hurt him? A man like that?”
“Oh, my dear Vick,” said Homer, “it probably didn’t have anything to do with Ham Dow himself. It was just some crazy fool, some terrorist. It was probably that Nepalese Freedom Movement. Ham just happened to be standing at the wrong place at the wrong time.” Homer stood up and took Vick by the shoulders and gently shoved her down on the bench. “Now look here, girl, tell me what happened this morning. Everything you saw. I mean, the police are going to want to talk to you anyway. And I used to be in the District Attorney’s office for Middlesex County, so I’d kind of like to understand the whole thing myself. Just begin at
the beginning.”
Vick hunched her shoulders and plunged her hands between her knees. Her face was a narrow white cleaver between the fiery masses of her hair, which was beginning to spring away from her head as it dried in the sun. “Well, I came early. I had a schedule. Chorus rehearsal was to be at ten o’clock from now on, every Monday and Wednesday, only I was coming an hour early to make sure everything was all set up and ready. I mean, Mr. Crawley’s supposed to do it, but he’s kind of—well, you know, he’s not very sharp. He’s really different from Michael Lane, who was there before. Only they promoted Michael, so now we’re stuck with Crawley. So I have to check up on him, you see. But the real reason I came a whole hour early was to practice. Oh, God.” Vick put her hand on her mouth. “I forgot my cello. I left it there, where it fell on its face. Oh, the heck with my cello. Where was I? I came an hour early to practice. You see, I just store my cello there in the instrument storage closet under the stairs. I’ve got my own key now.” Vick jerked a string from under her shirt and showed them the key hanging around her neck. “I take these lessons from Ham. Oh, I mean, I was taking lessons from Ham. He was a cellist himself, you see. That was his instrument. And he’s good, really good. Oh, I mean he was good. Oh, what a waste, what a waste.” Vick’s eyes filled again, but she shook herself and glared at Homer. “It must have been about nine o’clock when I got to Memorial Hall, walking over from Winthrop House, where I live, over there by the river. The bell was ringing, the new bell in the tower of Memorial Hall. I had the new posters about the concert under my arm. I tacked one of them up on the south door as I went in.…”
Chapter Seven
Vick stuck her box of thumbtacks in her pocket and stood back to look at the poster.
Free tickets. Free tickets again. That was Ham’s doing. Of course, it was crazy, just crazy. Because Ham would be handing out tickets too, and he’d lose track, and too many people would show up, and they’d be hanging from the rafters and crowded in the aisles, just the way they were last year. That was the way Ham wanted it. Let everybody in. Admission free for all. Well, that was what some people called it, a free-for-all. All that noise and confusion. But somehow Ham always seemed to make it work, and when they came to the end of Messiah, Part Two, he’d let everybody in Sanders stand up and sing the “Hallelujah Chorus” at the top of their lungs, and when the concert was over they’d all go home glad and satisfied. A concert with Ham Dow was always a lot more than just a musical experience. It would be like that again.
Vick pulled the door open, but the wind sucked through the enormous dark chamber on the other side and blew the door wide, slamming it against the side of the stone portal. She reached for the handle and tugged the door shut behind her and walked into the memorial transept. Morning light was slanting through the rose window, casting colored splotches on the wooden timbers that rose to the ribs of the pointed vault high over her head. The vaults themselves were almost invisible in the gloom. It was as if sheets of night sky were hung, pitchy black, down the length of the high corridor. Vick knew the building was supposed to be sort of medieval, but in her opinion it felt more like her great-grandfather’s house in Illinois, which had been built during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. The dark volumes of musty air had the fragrance of that house in Illinois, with the dim shadowy parlor and the laundry with the set tubs and the high varnished pantry. Vick’s footsteps were sharp chips of sound as she walked past the pale marble memorial tablets glimmering along the walls.
HENRY LIVERMORE ABBOTT. 6, MAY, 1864. WILDERNESS
JOHN LYMAN FENTON. 28, JULY, 1863. GETTYSBURG
She knocked on Mr. Crawley’s door.
Mr. Crawley looked out, his face vague under his duck-billed hat. “Oh, hi, there. You want something?”
“Oh, Mr. Crawley, did you remember to set up the chairs in Sanders? You know, for our special rehearsal with the orchestra. It’s a big special get-acquainted rehearsal of the Collegium and orchestra together, just for today. After today it will be the chorus at ten and the orchestra at eleven, every Monday and Wednesday. Remember? I mean, today is Wednesday.”
“Oh, Wednesday. Jeez, I thought it was Tuesday. Besides, I got like this acid stomach. Heartburn, you know?” Mr. Crawley belched stupendously and pressed a pitiful hand on his chest.
“Oh. Well, all right. I guess I can set them up myself. If I could just borrow the key.”
“Here, take it. It’s all yours. No, that’s all right. Keep it. I got lots of keys. Be my guest.” Then Mr. Crawley shut the door and withdrew into his cozy chamber, where Vick knew he had a nice leather sofa for snoozing. She hung the key on its long loop of string around her neck, crossed the hall, opened the instrument storage closet under the stairs, and took out her cello.
Then a long bar of sunlight fell on the floor from the door that opened on Cambridge Street, and she looked up in surprise. A very large angry man was standing over her, shouting. “Where in the name of God is Memorial Hall 201? I’ve been all over this place from top to bottom. I’ve turned it inside out, and I can’t find that sly, skulking lecture hall. I mean, Christ almighty, the building is so colossal, you’d think it would be bristling with lecture halls, but all I can find is vast caverns and long lonely corridors intertwining underground. Where in the hell is it at? I have given up all hope.”
Vick laughed. The man was pretending to be furious, but he was sort of crazy at the same time, and he looked so really incredibly tall and funny, with that shock of hair standing up all over his head. “Mem Hall 201? Oh, it’s way around the other end. You have to go out and come in again. It’s way down at that end, only on the other side.”
“Thank you,” growled the man. He disappeared, and Vick drew her music stand out of the closet, locked the closet, and unlocked the door to Sanders Theatre. She climbed the stairs to the stage and began moving chairs, hauling them from the back of the stage to the front. Sanders was empty, except for the stained-glass lady in the window at the back of the balcony, who was hanging a piece of crepe on a column, and the marble statues of Otis and Quincy, who were posturing at either side of the stage, and the foxy wooden faces of animals on the ends of the beams overhead. Would there be enough chairs? The chorus would be sitting on the benches out front, too swollen with hopeful candidates to fit on the stage with the orchestra. Ham would have to conduct in all directions at once.
The man came back.
He stood on the floor in front of Ham’s music stand and thundered at her. “No, it’s not, by God. I’ll be damned if I can find anything but a bloody copy center. I mean, how in the hell do the students find it? I’ll bet there are students wandering like lost souls around the city of Cambridge looking for Memorial Hall 201. I’ll bet they’ve got into another time frame entirely, and they’ll never get back into this world until another age dawns and judgment day bursts upon us all, and the architects who designed this building get their just deserts. I mean, why didn’t they make a Greek temple or something good-looking like that? Well, actually”—the man stopped his tirade and looked around and smiled—“actually, I like it, I mean, all this. It’s nice.” He waved his arm at the surrounding forest of timber in Sanders Theatre. “The light in here. It’s like amber. You can almost feel the flies stuck in it. You know. Ladies in long skirts. Gentlemen in frock coats. I’ll bet when you sit down you can feel their plump ancestral undergirding knees.” The man sat down promptly on the front bench and leaned back and grinned at Vick. “Really comfortable. The cozy ample laps of the forefathers. Now, where was I?” He stood up. “I got carried away.”
“You were looking for Mem Hall 201,” said Vick. “Come on. I’ll take you there myself. Just follow me.”
“You see, my wife had the course the first two weeks. She’s a specialist in the Boston abolitionists and Harriet Beecher Stowe and so on. It’s this course we’re teaching, ‘The Great Cloud Darkening the Land.’ That’s a quote from Walt Whitman, you see, that famous poem about Lincoln’s funeral train. It’s what we cal
l it, you see, the course. I mean, it’s the literature of abolition and the Civil War, and Mary and I teach it together. Thoreau, Whitman, Parkman, Garrison, Phillips, Melville, Lowell. People like that. Great stuff. Except for the fact that my wife—good grief, you know what she did? She palmed Louisa May Alcott off on me. How do you like that?”
“Gee, it sounds like a great course. I wish I could take it instead of Chem 2. I’m over my head already in Chem 2. Look, you see that door? You just go in that door and up the stairs instead of down.”
“Well, so that’s where it is. Well, thank heaven. And thank you, Ms.…?”
“Van Horn. Vick Van Horn. I’m Ham Dow’s assistant conductor for the Collegium Musicum. That’s the mixed chorus. That is, I am until I flunk Chem 2.”
“Kelly here. Homer Kelly. You’ll be seeing my wife, Mary, at ten o’clock. She’s going to sing in your chorus, the Collegium Whatchamacallit, this fall. I mean, it’s so handy, because the rehearsals are at ten and our class meets in the same building at eleven. Well, so long, Vick. You’ve been a friend in need.”
Vick ran back to Sanders and sat down with her cello and spent the next half hour practicing double stops in thirds. They were a brand-new exercise. Ham had assigned them at her lesson the day before. They were gruesome. Vick spraddled her left hand over the G and C strings at once and tried to get the major thirds on pitch. When Ham came in at quarter of ten with Jonathan Pearlman, she shouted at him, “Don’t listen.”
“Who wants to?” said Ham. He grinned at her and thumped his big Messiah score on the edge of the stage, while Jonathan began fussing with the chairs for the orchestra, shifting them a few inches this way and that. More people trickled in, greeting Ham with glad handshakes because they hadn’t seen him since last June. The trickle became a flood. Old and new members of the Collegium and the orchestra were thronging in the doors. The music librarian for the chorus moved back and forth, slapping down music folders on benches in alphabetical order, shouting, “A through H, pay your music deposit here.” A hundred pieces of music snapped into a hundred folders with sharp popping noises like scattered firecrackers. Ham stood at one side, his huge stomach thrust forward, his great bearded head turning, his big laugh breaking out. Something came sailing through the air, and Ham reached up calmly and caught it and threw it back. It was the Esterhazy boys, Siegfried and Putzi Esterhazy, throwing a Frisbee. They were running around the balcony, and up and down the stairs. Vick laughed. Why weren’t those little kids in school? Mrs. Esterhazy was terrible about making her children go to school. Then Mrs. Esterhazy herself steamed in, wearing a red fat-lady’s dress that nearly swept the floor. “Darling Veectoria,” boomed Mrs. Esterhazy. She was carrying a basket. She was passing out homemade candy. Vick took a piece. Rosie Bell, first trumpet, took another. Rosie was a star, a famous economist, and you’d think she’d be too busy to play in the orchestra, but Rosie was a good sport, and she never missed a rehearsal. She took her trumpet out of its case. The trumpet glittered in the sunlight. Rosy blew warm air into it and sat down and flapped through her music and let go with her solo from the end of Messiah. It was Rosie’s big moment. TahDAH, dadidadiDAH, dadidadidadidadiDAH, DAH DAH DAHdida, blared Rosie, her trills rippling like water. And then Mr. Proctor unbuttoned his sweater and swelled his barrel chest and closed his eyes and sang the words that went with Rosie’s fanfare: The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised, the dead shall be raised incorruptible.