Music for Love or War

by Martyn Burke

  “My father’s c-coming back tomorrow, g-goddammit.”

  That night the paintball war was fought along some tribal passion that most of the players could not begin to understand. High school in the west end of Toronto prepared them for none of the fierceness Omar infused in it all. In their confusion, it began simply as the same goofing-around game they always played.

  But blind fire soon raged. Snap battles broke out everywhere across the hills, the rules were disregarded, half the players were zombies, and trees ended up as abstract art.

  Danny was one of the Indians; it was part of the unspoken order of battle that he and Omar were usually on the same side. Danny and Omar. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. In most of the Little Big Horn battles they overwhelmed the cavalry. But on this night, nothing worked. It was all chaos. And all Danny wanted was for it to be over so he could get back to Ariana before she had to go home.

  Freddie pretty much ended it all when he ate the paint, taking a direct hit from Chapchuk right in his mouth. And while he was being hosed down, he threw up all over Adamson, Watson, and Gilmore, who were part of Custer’s cavalry, and everyone started accusing everyone else of dirty tactics. The hillsides echoed with wimpy war cries and confusion until the police cars showed up and they all scattered.

  Danny took off, glad to have it ended, just wanting to get out of the park and get to where Ariana would be waiting for him. He kept running until he reached one of the picnic tables, telling himself he was free of it all.

  And then he heard footsteps coming up behind him. Omar. Not even out of breath. “Yo.”

  “Yo, yourself.”

  “Want a Coke?”

  “I gotta go.”

  “Sorry, okay? I get wired. So I overdo things. What of it? Don’t you ever feel like you’re under a goddamn avalanche?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Everything.” Omar was walking around the table. “It’s too much.”

  “What is?”

  “All of it.” Omar waved a hand around in the air.

  “I gotta go,” said Danny.

  “Hey wait.”

  “Why?”

  Omar walked around in a tight little circle. “I don’t have anyone else to talk to.”

  Danny made an instant calculation. Ariana was waiting for him and there was only an hour before she would have to go home. So: how to say just enough to Omar without being trapped? It was a variation on the calculations he had made again and again in the previous month. Like how many hours it would take to get to a distant multiplex where no one would see them at a movie and get her back in time. Or the hours that one of her Muslim girlfriends felt comfortable covering for her. Or the hours, sometimes days, that Ahmed would be at the Islamic school outside the city. “So what’s going on?”

  Omar kept making his circles in silence. Then: “Don’t you feel it?”

  “Feel what?”

  “The tension, man. The goddamn tension.”

  “Maybe not like you do. What are you tense about?”

  “Stuff doesn’t fit together.”

  “Stuff?”

  “I’m a talker, man.”

  “So? You’re talking to me.”

  “Yeah. You’re the only one. Everything is compartments. I spend my life making sure I’m not talking to someone from one compartment about stuff in another compartment. Nothing fits together. Ahmed—he’d have a shitfit if I talked to him about what we do at Freddie’s, the women, the drinking. And the porn. He’ll bring the Prophet down on me for that. I’m going to go to our own kind of hell for drinking and porn and all of it, man. You know that?”

  “You’ll have tons of company.”

  “You know the problem with p-porn?”

  “No, what?”

  “It makes you crazy. You always want more.” He wasn’t sure Danny even heard him, staring off into some proprietary distance. “Hey, you listening to me?”

  “Course I am.”

  “Who the hell can I talk to about that stuff? You’re it, man. The only one who’s not in a compartment. And Bonnie—forget Dorothy, she’s never sober enough to figure anything out—but B-Bonnie? Can you imagine dragging her to the mosque, bouncing out of her blouse?”

  “Now, why would you want to take Bonnie to a mosque?”

  “She needs to go, I’m telling you. She’s way too mouthy for her own good.”

  Omar was talking so loudly that a family two tables away stopped what they were doing and looked at him until ice cream from their cones ran all over the children’s hands. “And you know what I dreamed about last night? Putting Dorothy in a hijab and a niqab—the whole package from head to foot—with only her eyes showing and then pulling it up and boning her from behind. Fucking her until she practically converted or something. Except she’d probably puke before she came.”

  The family quickly gathered up to leave, wiping ice cream away, the mother tugging her oldest daughter toward the car.

  “It’s like being in solitary even when you’re surrounded by people. I used to talk to Ahmed all the time. When we were little. Before we came over here. And before he started memorizing all the suras in the Quran. All hundred and fourteen of the damn things—do you know what kind of guy does that? A guy who never even thinks about boning Dorothy. Or anyone else.”

  “Maybe that’s all they think about.”

  “Now what the hell do I have to talk to him about? Or Freddie? Or Kenny? Or anyone? Do you know what it’s like being in a bottle? Living in compartments?”

  “What about your sister?” Tempting fate. Danny wanted to take the words back as he spoke.

  “My sister?” Omar looked appalled. “What about her?”

  Let it go. Don’t push it. “Can’t you talk to her?”

  “Would you talk to her?”

  Run. Escape. Send up decoy flares. “Is that what the Crazy Horse thing was all about tonight?”

  “My old man’s c-coming back. I told you, right? He’s right out of some other cen-century.” Omar was pacing around, staring into the ground. “The tension, it makes it g-go away.”

  “That’s it? That was why it had to be tonight? All that panic to have the battle tonight?”

  “Battles can be good, you know.”

  “For what?”

  “It’s like wildfires in the forests. They look like disasters. But really they’re clearing away all the crap that chokes off everything.”

  “I didn’t know we had crap that was choking off everything.”

  “Don’t you feel the high?”

  “I’m late.”

  “For what?”

  For your sister. “My parents.” Danny got up to leave.

  “There’s only you, man. You’re the only one.”

  • • •

  The old house on Algonquin Avenue, a block away from High Park, was scheduled for renovations once the trustees had resolved the land title problems for the estate of the elderly Ukrainian widow who had died three months ago. Danny’s father had twice been scheduled to begin work on it, but each time legal problems delayed settlement of the estate. Danny’s offer to “look in on it once in a while” was received with no afterthought by his father, whose home renovation business was already overwhelming him.

  After leaving Omar, Danny circled back through the park, sprinting across Parkside Drive. And then after walking up and down the block to make sure that no one was watching, he hurried up to the door on the shadow-darkened porch and tapped quickly, three times, on one of the beveled glass panes, waited for a moment, and then tapped twice. The door opened and fetid air from within the house rushed out at him, like the breath of something that had died.

  She was waiting for him. She had backed away and stood in the only illumination there, the silver cast from the street light outside. It was a pale light that concealed more than it revealed, and he could not tell if she had been crying. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Omar. He wanted to talk.” There was no reply at first, until she reached out
and took his hand.

  He knew exactly what was to come.

  She would wait until he made the next move, putting one arm around her, perhaps brushing back the waves of dark hair from around her eyes, holding her, dancing to music that only they heard, trying to keep it light, swaying until they were pressed against one another. Lost utterly within whatever voids they filled for one another, and in the moment before he kissed her he would tell himself that this time it was different, it was as he had imagined it to be.

  Not once had they ever undressed. The closest they had come was on a Saturday afternoon when Ariana had begun removing the outer layers of cotton that she had to wear. They were the folds of cloth carefully arranged to cover this new body of hers with its suddenly full breasts that still felt like they were not really a part of her. On the streets she had begun covering herself more completely. The mere thought of her father or of Ahmed watching men look at her was enough to make her wrap herself in layers of cloth.

  In the entire three-story house on Algonquin Avenue, there were now only two pieces of furniture to show that lives had been led there. There was a battered old C.M. Schroder grand piano with a missing middle C key, standing in the oblique silver light, a bulwark against the tide of oblivion engulfing those departed lives. In the same room was a brocade-covered couch, a faded voluptuary to which he would lead her, where she would smilingly recline, pulling him onto her. For a single moment they would be embracing, wrapped around one another with an urgency, a simple desperation that would always veer into the complicated physicality of clothing being rearranged. And it would end as it was destined to end, in confusion and awkwardness with one barely audible word: Please. It was a clean, sharp ending as irrevocable as anything he knew of. Please. She always said it. And he always stopped.

  “I’m sorry,” she would say.

  “It’s okay,” he would rasp breathlessly, lying but not wanting to hurt her.

  “I’m not good for you. Someone else would be better.”

  “I don’t want someone else.”

  There always were minor variations on what followed. On the previous Friday night, there had been explanatory fragments about her family and the tribal way things were done. And the codes. Endlessly there were the codes, the Pashtunwali, the way their lives had to be led. Always, the codes of Pashtunwali had to be obeyed. Or so she said. She had reached down, putting her hand over his as it rested on the curve of her hip. She had moved his hand across her stomach, releasing it to explore on its own. He had reached under her blouse, caressing the outline of her breasts, but when he reached around to unhook her bra he felt her entire body stiffen.

  “Whatever happens . . .” she had said.

  Now he waited. She did not finish the sentence. “What about whatever happens?”

  The silence of the old house was so complete he thought the dead were listening. “Please.” And then only silence that he did not intrude upon.

  Nothing in his life had prepared him for the confusion of lying there in the darkness with a girl who was suddenly sobbing uncontrollably. He did the only thing he could think of. He put his arms around her and wondered what to say. He told himself he had to say something. So he said, “I love you.”

  And then a few minutes later in the silent stillness he said, “Would you play something for me?” He had no idea why he said it. Maybe to make her laugh at how awkward he felt. Or perhaps to change the topic. Or maybe just to make those Pashtunwali codes go away.

  Codes. He forgot the word until later, much later, in the mountains.

  She had looked at him laughing and maybe crying at the same time. And then he had stretched across the old brocade couch, listening to her play the battered piano and wondering if there really were marmalade skies the way the Beatles said there were.

  She played with no middle C key and he never noticed. It was as if something in her took flight when she played. It came from some new confidence acquired in all the hours of practice, a kind of joy that flew from the music. And from her. She suddenly stopped playing and said, “You have to take me away. You know that, don’t you? It’s the only way.” It was all so simple. So straightforward. What was there that was so difficult to understand? . . . take me away! It was that simple.

  And yet, he missed it.

  For all the years afterward he asked himself what was there that he couldn’t see?

  I know. I could see it, those invisible welts lying across some part of a soul. The scars he kept hidden behind that crinkly grin. Or tried to. But it became as if old wounds were suddenly ripped open up there in the Afghan mountains, when he would stride into the twilight loudly and blasphemously invoking whatever gods could hear him in the gathering gloom, asking that he be made to suffer, not her. Yelling to Jehovah Shiva Buddha God Allah Jesus and all those in between. Raging at them. And then talking to her, telling her he was sorry, as if she was out there listening to him, just beyond the next mountain, telling her that he would find her, he would, he swore he would.

  That he loved her. And that he would take her away.

  Finally.

  But tonight? None of it was as it had been in their past. “Please,” she said. “For many reasons. Some of them I can’t ask you to understand. But I want . . . I want . . .”

  “What?”

  In the glint of the pale, hard light he saw her eyes in some strange alloy of shame and longing. She buried her face in the brocade. “I want to feel you inside me.”

  It did not happen. At the moment he leaned over her in the darkness, he felt a shudder, almost a convulsion, sweep through her as she began to cry. “I’m sorry,” she whispered over and again, tears flowing onto his hands as they lay there in numb exhaustion, naked in so many ways. Then she was silent, still, and finally said one word: “Zadran.”

  “What’s Zadran?”

  “Not what—who. He is a chief. From Miram Shah. In the tribal area. He is very powerful. My father comes back here tomorrow. Zadran will be coming soon after. To see my father.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Yes. I think so. A very big problem.”

  “Why?”

  She didn’t answer.

  14

  That year it all changed.

  Sayyid Shah had returned from the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan and marveled over the difference in his sons. Ahmed had almost grown a full beard. And Omar was as tall as he was. And strong, which pleased Sayyid Shah more than anything else about his son.

  Almost immediately, Omar changed. He began avoiding everyone he once talked to, showing up at his locker in the morning, going through classes in silence, and then leaving after school before Danny could find him. In the middle of the week, he simply stopped going to school. Ahmed was seen hurrying along Queen Street, a hunted quality to him, his errant eye flailing like a searchlight separated from the darkness. But it was Ariana who seemed most affected. For several days she did not come to school. When she did, she brushed past Danny, vanishing into the crowded hallway without a word.

  In the afternoon, he saw her seated on a chair in the hall not far from the entrance to the auditorium. She was staring straight ahead.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t talk about it.” He could barely hear her. “Please.”

  Danny walked down to another part of the hall, put his back against a locker, and slid down to the floor, never taking his eyes off her. Keep it light—somehow.

  “What are you doing?” It was the first hint of urgency in her voice.

  Make her smile. “You obviously don’t want me around, so I’ll just hang out down here.” He grinned and felt awkward for doing it. Try! “And if you won’t even look at me I guess I’ll have to sit here till you—”

  A door to the auditorium opened and the halls echoed with student musicians rehearsing some Tchaikovsky piano concerto minus the piano. A man Danny recognized as one of the music teachers stepped out into the marbled stillness as Tchaikovsky was pushed back inside by
the force of the heavy door closing.

  “Ariana? Are you sure about this?” he asked. Said gently, almost kindly, Danny thought, watching from the length of a hallway. To Danny, the teacher was definitely older, which was anyone about forty or more, with thinning gray-blond hair and little wire glasses on a round, ruddy face.

  “Yes. I’m sure.” Her whisper echoed faintly and died, scattered in pieces across the marbled floor.

  “I don’t understand.” The teacher spoke as quietly as she did. “You have a gift. And you want to stop playing?”

  Ariana stared into the floor and slowly nodded.

  “I’ve taught here for sixteen years. I’ve waited for your kind of talent to show up. For selfish reasons perhaps. It’s the kind of talent that makes someone like me know he made the right decision when he chose to teach music.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.” The teacher let out a breath that was a statement all its own. “We all have strange elements in our lives that make the rational somewhat irrational.” Danny liked the teacher immediately. He cared. A lot. You could tell. Danny sat on the floor motionless, wondering if the teacher would look down the hall and see him watching it all.

  But the teacher was staring off into a place only he could see. “When I heard you play that Gershwin concerto I almost wept. Most people mangle the opening.”

  “Thank you.” She shook her head slowly.

  “I’m very confused. So I have to ask you something,” he said. “Why? Why are you giving all this up?”

  “I have no choice.”

  “We all have a choice.”

  “Not all of us.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She looked up at him for the first time. “Where I am from it is different.”

  “How?”

  “Music is evil.”

  “Evil?” A flicker of a confused smile flashed across his face. “You’re joking. You don’t believe that.”

  “What I believe is not important.”