The other two tenors told Blue that they would meet him at the reception hall. Blue waved to them and directed his attention towards March again.
‘Speak,’ Blue said.
His voice was raspy and low – quite different from his singing voice.
March was nervous. ‘Hi,’ she said.
Blue smiled and showed his bright teeth. ‘Hi. When do you sleep?’
‘Never.’
‘Sing. Sing me a song.’
There was no one left in the Auditorium. The lights inside had dimmed since the tenors had stopped singing. March sang. Blue tilted his head back and closed his eyes. He moved his cane in rhythm to the song. The lights started to brighten again. March stopped singing.
‘Please. Continue.’
March started to sing again and this time, Blue sang along. The lights became brighter and brighter – they became so bright that the bulbs cracked and shattered and the floor was covered in glass. They both stopped singing.
‘You have it,’ Blue said. ‘You have the voice of the world.’
‘My parents said that I could sing since I was young,’ March said.
‘You’re the one,’ Blue said.
He put his hand on her shoulder.
‘We will meet again some time,’ Blue said. ‘Whether in this world or another, we will meet again.’
Blue dusted the pieces of glass off his suit and limped away, leaning on his cane, nodding his head. He turned around.
‘You will sing the sun to sleep one day and all will be well,’ Blue said.
Because it was already morning, March left the Auditorium for the harbour to say bye to Fey and Fife. Walking by the café, she saw Mario through the window, serving a long line of customers. Morning was the busiest time of day for him and she recognized some of the customers from the Auditorium. Mario saw March through the window and waved. She waved back and asked a carriage driver if he would be kind enough to take her to the harbour.
‘Beautiful morning today,’ the driver said.
‘I would like to think that it is a beautiful morning every day,’ March replied.
The driver smiled and took her to the harbour. Fey and Fife were already there. They had to tie their hats around their heads because of the ocean breeze.
‘We wondered where you were,’ Fey said.
‘I watched the three tenors sing throughout the night,’ March said.
Fey had to board his ship. He hugged March and kissed her on the forehead.
‘Don’t be a stranger,’ he said. ‘You have my address; come over anytime. You will have a place to stay.’
Soon after, Fife had to board her ship.
‘Just as Fey said, you will always have a place to stay with me.’
She kissed March on the forehead and walked toward her ship. March went home and started to clean up the house. After the death of the Armers, the house went to the next eldest of kin, which was Fey. He, in turn, gave the legal papers of the house over to Fife, who handed it over to March.
‘It is your place,’ Fife had said. ‘Love it as it has loved you.’
Since the week of the Armers’ burial service, March had been constantly busy – either with the funeral service, or with Fey and Fife. She now found herself completely alone in the house. She wanted to store the Armers’ belongings in boxes and decided to begin with their bedroom. She stripped the bed sheets, the same ones that they had died on, folded them neatly, making sure that the creases were tightly made, and placed them in a box. They didn’t have too much in their room. On one side of the bed was the dresser with a mirror. On the other side was a closet full of clothes. The two bedside tables each had matching bronze lamps. Each table also had a book that the Armers would read before falling sleep. March laughed out loud as she remembered Ons falling asleep with a book underneath his arms. When he woke up in the morning to kiss his wife hello, he would mistakenly kiss the book he was reading the night before. ‘Too bad the book has no lips,’ Sofi would say.
March placed the lamps in a box and wiped the dust off the bedside tables. The dust made her sneeze. She went to the dresser where all of Sofi’s jewellery was kept in two small containers made of marble. On the outside were carvings of elephants. The one she opened was full of earrings and bracelets. Every one of them had some kind of blue jewel. March had never noticed that before. The other container had necklaces and rings, all of which had orange jewels.
‘Like the sun and the ocean,’ March said.
The dresser drawers had all of Sofi’s clothes, the ones she wore regularly, including her nightgowns. She pulled out a few of the shirts and smelled the perfume. Its scent reminded her of watching Sofi dress up at night for an evening soiree – she would give March a little bit of the perfume. Of all the things the Armers left behind, she packed everything, except the perfume.
The most troublesome part of cleaning the Armers’ bedroom was the closet, which was full of coats, dresses and suits. She took out three large boxes full of Sofi’s dresses and, underneath the gowns, March saw a smaller container, opened, full of papers and envelopes.
‘Love letters,’ March said.
She assumed they were old letters that Sofi and Ons had exchanged. She was right, but there were also other letters – in these, she discovered a whole new world. She read some of the love letters first, realizing that the Armers, at one point, had lived passionate lives. This was a life she had never seen when she was living in their care. She looked at the dates of the letters and noticed that they were written well before Fey, Fife or herself were born. ‘My Dear Earth’ headed each letter written to Ons, in which Sofi would write about her feelings for him, which included the fact that he was the earth to her. The letters Ons addressed to Sofi began with ‘My Dear Ocean’, where he wrote about how she was the ocean to him and that he was just a seagull who flew above her. From the dates of the letters, she realized that they had been courting each other for nine years, from when they were both thirteen years old. From some of the letters, March discovered that their parents forbade their love.
‘Like Shakespeare,’ March said.
They had secretly loved each other for seven years without their parents’ knowledge. The reason had nothing to do with politics or money – but rather, falcons and pride.
Ons’s father, Perry, and Sofi’s father, Lorenzo, were involved in falcon fighting. Perry and Lorenzo were the owners of the two best falcons in the falcon-fighting competition. In the championship tournament, Perry’s male bird, Thunder, and Lorenzo’s female bird, Lightning, were in the final round of the tournament. The match was anticipated to be one of the best fights of the falcon-fighting tournament. Pre-fight parties were held, bets were placed, street-lights lit up the town, as did fireworks and shooting stars. Thunder was considered to be the underdog of the two birds, though they were both equally fierce. As the bell rang, the two soared into the air to kill. But the unexpected took place and neither of the falcons won: once they were in the air, and as soon as Thunder was to make his first peck at Lightning, he fell in love with her. Lightning, who had once had the narrowest of eyes, looked at him with round, watery pupils. They fluttered in the air, in circular motion, observing each other’s wings. As soon as Perry yelled ‘fight’, the two flew away together. Perry and Lorenzo never saw their birds again and they blamed each other.
‘Your falcon is a womanizer!’ Lorenzo screamed.
‘Your falcon is promiscuous!’ Perry replied.
They stood there for hours arguing about the fight and who should get the money. Perry claimed that he should since Lightning had followed Thunder. But Lorenzo asserted that since Lightning had followed Thunder, he should receive the reward money. The tournament judge, a Mr Shursh, ruled that they should split the prize money, but both refused, for each wanted all the money. So the town decided to use the money to buy drinks at Café Bar, while Perry and Lorenzo continued to squabble like chickens.
On that very day, Ons and Sofi met each other for the f
irst time. Ons peered over his father’s shoulder to see Sofi peering from behind her father’s back. They stared into each other’s eyes until they both felt dizzy and fell to the ground. Without saying a word to each other, they stood up and ran off to the field of orange trees where they discovered each other’s bodies. They were cartographers. And while their fathers continued their dispute, while the rest of the town drank their brains away, Ons and Sofi realized the purposes of science and geometry.
Their parents never knew of their relationship until a few days before their respective deaths. Ons and Sofi told them, not out of guilt, but to let their parents know of their love for each other before they passed away.
It was awkward for March to think that Ons and Sofi had once lived a totally different life. She never saw them expressing any kind of physical intimacy while she was living with them. Perhaps the Armers were accustomed to hiding their love and so they did it for the rest of their lives.
In another box, March noticed a collection of envelopes and papers of a different tint. She saw that they were not love letters written between ‘ocean’ and ‘earth’, but letters written from a man named Jonas from the city of Kolkaper. She had never heard Ons or Sofi mention his name before. There was a huge bundle of letters tied with a red ribbon, which March carefully untied. When she saw who these letters were addressed to, her eyes widened and she started to breathe with such power that the letters before her fluttered around.
In his writings to March, Jonas had never mentioned that he was her father, or that Maria was her mother. He didn’t know how to let her know, or when to let her know. Perhaps he hoped the Armers would tell her. Things had not gone as Jonas had planned. Maria and he would have moved to Koofay after they had saved enough money.
Then they would explain everything to March face to face. But Jonas did not think that doing it through a letter would have been respectful or effective. Each letter was addressed with ‘My Dear Singing March’. He wrote to her as if he knew her as a good friend, as if he knew everything she did. March took the box out of the closet and sat on the Armers’ mattress. The earliest date recorded was a letter written three weeks after she born. Jonas wrote about how Maria had been stabbed and was in a critical condition. He also wrote about how much they missed her. ‘We loved to see you sing; we loved to see your eyes,’ one line read. March sat on the Armers’ bed and read letter after letter. She noticed that the later letters became shorter and shorter and that Jonas’s tone was becoming sadder and sadder. March still didn’t know who they were. She realized that she must have met them when she was a baby, but she wondered why the Armers’ never told her about them. She worried about Maria, though she didn’t know who she was, and she also worried about Jonas’s condition, which was gradually declining as well. The last letter was the shortest, and the saddest: ‘Dear March, I am about to forget you, but remember, Maria and I love you.’
March placed the letters back in their envelopes and then returned them to the box. She looked out the window as the sun reached its highest point. Her confusion was nowhere close to being cleared. She decided to visit Harnez, who was one of the Armers’ few surviving close friends. He and his wife, Kayna, had known Sofi and Ons since they were all children.
Harnez’s wife had died three years ago due to a broken leg. She didn’t know that her leg was broken – she thought it was arthritis. Harnez told her to go see the doctor, but she refused.
‘Doctors are for broken legs,’ she told him.
On the morning of their fortieth anniversary, as Kayna stepped out of the bathtub on her broken leg, she fell and hit her head on the edge of the sink and died.
At her cremation, Harnez told Ons, ‘She died clean and fresh. The less dirt on her, the less weight the wind will have to pull.’
Harnez had become a hermit since then. The last time he left the house was for the Armers’ service and even then, he had sat in his wheelchair far away and hid behind trees. March walked down the street from her house to Harnez’s house. The roof of his porch was supported by three small pillars, while the fourth pillar was broken and strewn in pieces about the ground. There were a dozen chickens in the front yard. The front door didn’t have a handle, only a hole where the handle had been. March walked up the steps and knocked on the door. There was no response. She knocked again, louder and longer. She heard the squeaks of the wheelchair stop right on the other side of the door, but Harnez still didn’t open it.
‘Mr Harnez, it’s March. Can I ask you some questions?’
The chickens in the front yard squawked in reply. March bent down and looked through the hole in the door. She saw Harnez’s eye looking straight through the hole, causing March to jump back. She knocked again. Harnez opened the door.
‘Don’t let the chickens in,’ he said. ‘They are cranky.’
March looked around the living room. It was covered in dust. Near the window was a telescope, but March couldn’t see the colour because of the dirt and mud that encased it. On a three-levelled shelf, she saw books with their spines torn or faded away. On the centre table was the doorknob of the front door. The walls were covered with old prints, including ones by Van Gogh and Munch. The room had no chairs.
‘I am always sitting,’ Harnez explained.
March sat on the floor and leant back against the wall.
‘Why are you here?’ Harnez asked.
His glasses, tinted dark, had slipped down the bridge of his nose. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt with faded blue stripes. It looked as if it hadn’t been washed in days and was probably the only shirt he had worn for years. His brown pants were too short for his legs, revealing thin ankles. He wore black shoes with no socks.
‘Excuse my attire,’ he said. ‘I haven’t changed since the death of my wife.’
To March’s surprise, he didn’t smell badly.
‘I still bathe,’ Harnez said. ‘And I wear the remains of my wife’s perfumes.’
‘Sorry to bother you,’ March said. ‘But I was wondering if you could help me understand something. I know you were close friends with my parents, Sofi and Ons Armer.’
Harnez bowed his head.
‘I am their youngest child, March.’
‘March,’ Harnez said. ‘I had seen you when you were the singing baby. My condolences to the family. They were loving people.’
‘By any chance, would you know if I was born here, or in Kolkaper?’
The tea kettle from the kitchen whistled.
‘Would you like some mango tea?’ Harnez asked.
March accepted his offer. He came back with two cups and handed one to March.
‘I love mango tea. When Kayna and I met for the first time at the café, we both drank mango tea.’
‘My condolences to you,’ March said.
Harnez did not reply.
‘I know about your whole life,’ he said. ‘I’m probably the only person still living that knows about you, apart from Fey and Fife.’
March sipped her tea and let the scent drift into her nose and mouth.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘Is it true that I was born in Kolkaper?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t they tell me about this?’
‘It’s rather complicated,’ Harnez said.
He sipped his tea, spilling some on his shirt. He didn’t flinch and continued to drink from the cup.
‘This tastes horrible,’ he said. ‘But it’s the only taste I know.’ He coughed. ‘Though you can consider yourself an Armer, for they have brought you up since you were a baby, you are not an Armer.’
March placed her cup on the floor. Her stomach was rumbling, not out of hunger, but because of nervousness.
‘You were the singing baby,’ Harnez said. ‘A baby who couldn’t sleep and because of this, you had to leave Kolkaper.’
He ran his fingers around the spokes of the wheels.
‘They wanted to take you away,’ he said. ‘The Armers agreed to take you in and become your
parents.’
‘Who wanted to take me away?’ March asked.
‘The Council, the townspeople, the scientists, everyone. They weren’t sure if you would curse the town. They wanted to run tests on you.’
‘So the Armers weren’t my biological parents?’
Harnez did not reply.
‘Who are Jonas and Maria?’ March asked. ‘Are they my real parents? I have found a box full of letters written to me by Jonas. Am I his daughter?’
Harnez looked into March’s eyes. March looked back into Harnez’s eyes. They sat there for eleven minutes, neither saying a word. The chickens outside continued to squawk in search of breadcrumbs. Harnez wheeled himself to a long string that was connected to the ceiling fan. He tugged on it and the fan began to rotate in a rickety movement. As it gradually moved faster, dust began to fall from the blades. The particles made Harnez sneeze. His eyes were red and watery.
‘I can’t remember when I last used this thing,’ he said. ‘Even the dust has died of old age.’
The rim of his collar was soaked with sweat. March wiped the perspiration from her forehead.
‘I don’t know who those people are,’ Harnez said. ‘Ons never told me who your parents are, but only your situation. And that your parents loved you enough to send you away for your own protection.’
‘Did you hear anything about my real mother being stabbed?’ March asked.
Harnez cleared his throat.
‘I know nothing else about your parents.’
‘Why did you call me the singing baby?’ March asked. ‘As soon as you were born, you started to sing, as if you had been singing for thirty years.’
He laughed and then coughed.
‘And, as you know, you never slept. That is why they sent you away from Kolkaper. No one has ever seen a baby, straight out of a mother’s womb, sing the song of the sea.’
‘It is my favourite song,’ March said.
‘They were scared and wanted to send you away to the Cave Forest,’ Harnez said. ‘But your parents, they loved you too much to send you there.’
Harnez blinked repeatedly. March sipped her tea and tried hard not to make a face.
The Sea Singer Page 6