Dead People's Music

by Sarah Laing

  Ivan shows us his favourite bar. ‘See, there’s a pool near the entrance. I wonder how many people end up in it late at night.’ I press my face against the glass to see a glittery black slick. I wouldn’t be surprised if it accommodated piranhas.

  Turning back, we wander into Hassidic Williamsburg. ‘Yeah, it’s crazy, all the hipsters live on one side, and the Hasidim live on the other. Check out their balconies.’

  I look up. ‘They’re big.’

  ‘It’s because the men have to live outside at certain times of the year, so they sleep on them.’

  ‘They’re amazing. I can’t get over their clothing. It’s like they’ve stepped out of a time machine.’ The men in their long coats and top hats, with the white threads hanging down, and their side locks, beards and shaved backs of their heads.

  ‘Yeah, but you’ll see them talking on cell phones and using laptops.’

  ‘It doesn’t look right. Do you think they put rollers in their side-locks?’

  ‘I dunno … the women wear these wigs though, to hide their hair,’ says Ivan, jumping from one foot to another, shaking out the cold.

  ‘My grandmother was Jewish. My dad’s mum.’

  ‘You’ll feel right at home then. New York is a very Jewish city.’

  ‘Except I’m not eligible. It comes down the mother’s line, and my grandmother kept it pretty quiet when she moved to New Zealand. My dad, who’s Jewish, completely renounced it. He’s an atheist engineer who went to an Anglican boarding school. I think his father’s family might have been a bit anti-Semitic.’

  ‘I know my grandad was. No reason for it too. I don’t think he’d even met a real Jew in his life,’ says Ivan.

  Returning on the subway from my latest wedding, I was approached by a Jewish man. Not a Hasid, but wearing a yarmulke and an old-fashioned long black coat. I was wearing make-up and my good scarlet dress, 1950s style, with a full enough skirt so that I could split my legs to accommodate the cello. I sensed him staring at me through his wire-framed glasses as we rushed through the tunnels. I looked at the advertisements: dial 1-800 DIVORCE, when diamonds aren’t forever. I tried to decipher the Spanish sit-com ads from my small cache of Italian. When I got off the train he was beside me, trying to help. I pulled my cello away from him, stood it up between us. ‘Sorry, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry for staring.’

  ‘That’s okay.’ I had made eye contact, something the guide books had warned me about. I corrected my error, looking at the backs of people’s knees, pushing my way through the crowd, towards the stairs. I thought I had lost him, but he appeared above ground in the artificial light of the stationery store. He touched my arm. ‘May I have a word?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I snapped.

  ‘I have to tell you that you have a beautiful face. Would you like to talk?’

  ‘No!’ I said, and allowed my cello to fall so that it was a barge post, forcing a tunnel through the people. I walked and walked, under the street lights, until the crowd thinned and I had passed the laundry, the magazine seller, the jazz school, the café, the bakery and the Catholic school, finally reaching Wendy’s apartment.

  But going inside, I was almost sad when I had lost him. Did I have a beautiful face?

  ‘I wonder whether it’s true that Orthodox Jews have sex though sheets with little holes in them,’ says Toby, blowing steamy clouds and stomping feeling back into his toes.

  ‘Isn’t that what they do in Mexico? I’m sure I saw it in that movie Like Water for Chocolate. The hole was beautifully embroidered.’

  ‘We better hurry over to that last apartment,’ says Ivan. Already we’ve dismissed the noisy one beside the freeway, and the sloping-floored one above a shop on Bedford Street.

  ‘Is it far?’

  ‘A few blocks west. Not Williamsburg precisely, but that makes the rent cheaper.’

  It’s getting dark. Night falls early here. The place seems more like a house, unexpected in New York. Ivan knocks, too softly for people to hear, but a dog barks and thrashes so that our presence is unmistakable.

  ‘I don’t want to be here,’ I say, and Toby puts his arm around me: he isn’t scared of dogs or sharks. There’s a ‘Down, Chachie,’ and the sound of a scuffle. The turning of locks; a woman with saucers for eyes opens the door, bent over the Rottweiler, holding on tight to its collar. She seems too small to offset its intent. She looks like she is on valium, and smiles while the dog bares its teeth. The only way to stop a Rottweiler is by grabbing its front legs and pulling them apart to snap them, I remember Megan saying. Or you have to take your fist and ram it down its throat and choke it.

  ‘Go upstairs,’ says a silhouette in the hallway, and the woman does, taking the dog with her. The man comes closer. He is huge, his moustache thick like a policeman’s. He crushes Ivan and Toby’s hands and smiles or grimaces at me.

  ‘So what do you kids do?’ he asks, showing us a wood-panelled room with a mirror wall.

  ‘We’re web designers,’ says Ivan, gesturing at Toby, ‘and Rebecca’s a cellist.’

  ‘You’re not gay, are you? Because I don’t want my wife to be exposed to that,’ says the man, leading us through to a low-ceilinged living area, this feature wall clad in brick.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ I say.

  ‘No, Toby and Rebecca are a couple,’ says Ivan, looking warningly at me.

  The man harrumphs and leads us out to the garden. ‘Did this myself,’ he says, proudly, gesturing at the fountain, crafted from hunks of concrete painted up to look like marble. A cherub piddles water, his scrotum stained orange. The garden has been paved over and on it stand wrought iron chairs and table. A lost opportunity for greenness in Greenpoint.

  ‘I couldn’t live there,’ I say after we were a few metres down the road.

  ‘It looked okay. Warm. Some outdoor space,’ says Ivan.

  ‘But didn’t that offend all your sensibilities?’ says Toby.

  ‘You’re so moderne. You want one of those minimalist lofts, don’t you? I kind of liked its kitschness.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to live near those people,’ I say.

  ‘It was cheap. You can’t be too picky. Hey, a bakery. I’m hungry,’ says Ivan.

  It is empty and desolate around here, an odd place for a bakery. It would be better suited to the main street, where people walk past. Maybe this is the kind of neighbourhood where people barricade themselves inside as soon as the sun sets. The bakery has long flickering fluorescent lights, accentuating the acid yellow of the walls. On the racks are two loaves of bread. The baker, a stout man with tattoos beneath his thicket of arm hair, is talking on the phone in Italian. He wedges the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he slips the loaf, shaped like a steering wheel, into a plastic bag. Ivan hands him the money and the baker talks more insistently, cajolingly, as he opens the till and counts coins into Ivan’s palm. ‘Thank you, have a good night,’ he says in a broad New York accent, before swapping back to Italian.

  ‘That place was so mafioso,’ says Ivan. ‘There are a lot of joints round like that. Look at this one. Italian Ice. Very appropriate.’ The store is empty. ‘And fake sausage shops, they’re another one to look out for. Have you guys watched The Sopranos? We’ve got to get cable in our apartment.’

  ‘I don’t watch much TV,’ I say.

  ‘You can’t miss The Sopranos,’ says Ivan. ‘Then you know what to look out for.’

  ‘Maybe we should rent it,’ says Toby.

  ‘We could make it our house-warming,’ says Ivan. ‘Get a pile of pizzas and beer and watch the whole first series back-to-back. We’ll have to get cable. I can’t stand free TV. Nothing decent to watch. It’s not that expensive, only $40 a month. We could go halves. You get DSL with the rental.’

  I cringe at the word house-warming, making eyes at Toby. I do not want to move in with Ivan. I do not want cable. But Toby’s going Yeah, cool bro, being all mate-ish. They’re doing one of those handshakes they stole off the African Americans
, clicking each other’s fingers, pressing knuckles. ‘I’m freezing. Can we go home now?’ I ask Toby.

  ‘No, I want to take you to a bar,’ says Ivan. ‘It’s the one they based Coyote Ugly on. Let’s take the L-train back to Manhattan.’

  ‘Sure,’ says Toby, looking half-apologetic, half-excited. He tries to catch my eye, to get me to agree, but I won’t look at him. I sink into a sulk.

  ‘The women have really big tits and they wear these low-cut shirts. Ironic, of course. Have you heard of Hooters?’

  ‘I think I can imagine,’ I say. ‘Where’s your girlfriend tonight?’

  ‘She put me onto this place. The beer is cheap.’

  ‘I’m going home,’ I say. I can’t stand this blokey version of Toby; he’s a bit like this around his dad. It unsettles me, makes me wonder if what he is with me is an approximation of what he thinks I want and not his true self.

  Anyway, I haven’t practised today: I should, or my cello will seize up. It needs the resistance to stay supple, giving. Of course, not as generous as my grandmother’s cello, but as much sound as Lydia’s old one can give me.

  Toby looks at me nervously: he hasn’t been out drinking alone in this city. Perhaps he needs me there as a reference point, so he doesn’t descend forever into blokedom.

  ‘Don’t wait up, Rebecca,’ says Ivan.

  CHAPTER 11

  Wellington, 1991

  Fifth form was the important year, where I had to get good School C marks for my hazy and terrifying future. I didn’t know what I wanted to be, although the career counsellor told me I had to make a decision now, because it would influence what subjects I took. We had been given a form in which to write our ambitions. I wrote Singer in a band, Radio DJ and Italian translator. I thought about writing down Doctor, because then I could treat other diabetics and really understand what they were going through, not adopting the patronising air my specialists had, but my science marks weren’t that great so I didn’t stand a chance.

  The counsellor, a dumpling of a woman with a pleated neck and bath sponge hairdo, took my form and hummed and hahed. Singer in a band was out; had I thought of becoming a music therapist for disabled children? Radio DJ, maybe, but you needed a larger than life personality for that, and I had struck the counsellor as a rather quiet girl. I couldn’t study Italian at school; she imagined translators would probably have Italian parents, so I would be at a serious disadvantage. I mentioned the doctor idea, and she substituted dietitian. Then I wouldn’t have to be nearly so brilliant at sciences and I could pick up domestic science. I shuddered; I hated the dietitians that I had met, with their bossy meal plans.

  Art curator? I said, thinking of my grandfather, in nappies at the rest home, wheeled out into the lounge for an infantile sing-along, the nurse aides knees-up-mother-browning to encourage their charges to exercise. Dad visited Grandad every week, but I only went every couple of months, since he didn’t have the faintest idea who I was. All of his collection, his Wollastons, McCahons and Lois Whites, had been sold, first to pay for his booze, then for the rest home fees. Sometimes I heard my parents saying it would be merciful if Grandad died, but he had a strong heart, which kept on beating despite him. I looked into his swimmy blue eyes, lower lids drooping to reveal a smile of red, and he seemed like a child. When I gave him grapes, he spat the pips onto the carpet. I imagined what remained of his brain to be barnacled to the inside of his skull, leaving a clear pond in the middle.

  ‘Art curator, maybe,’ said the career counsellor, taking her big glasses off, wiping them with her hanky and letting them dangle on their gold chain. There were angry red marks where the nose grips had dug into her skin. But yet again, New Zealand was a small country and there were only a few galleries that needed curating. Maybe it was better to aim towards accounting, so that I could get in on the practical business side, and have a flexible skill that could accommodate me elsewhere.

  I left feeling depressed and anxious. I couldn’t imagine myself to be an accountant. I would have to be something that involved music, or Italy, or both. Later that afternoon, at my cello lesson with Lydia, I asked her whether she thought I had a chance of going to music school.

  Lydia looked at me quizzically. ‘You definitely have the talent, Rebecca. It’s just a matter of determination. If you were to really concentrate, and put some hours into practising, then you’d have a fine chance of making the cut. Maybe we need to aim higher with the music examinations: you could probably sit grade seven, eight at a pinch this year. It would be better if you sat eight. Then you’d have a head start on the audition.’

  ‘Did you always know that you were going to be a cellist?’

  Lydia smiled, tucking her silver hair behind her ears, looking as if she were remembering a happy childhood. ‘Yes, yes I did. All I could put my mind to was playing the cello. I dreamed throughout my other lessons. When I was in my twenties, I wondered whether I might have chosen too young. I thought that I might have been a chef instead, a whole foods one like Alice Waters in Berkeley. I went through a phase where I thought I could be a cookbook writer, and I scribbled down all my recipes, especially those I’d gleaned from the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands. But really, the cello always called to me, and the months I spent on the yacht, I missed it terribly.’

  My grandmother’s cello called to me too, plaintively from my cupboard. How could you have broken me? Now I am lost, and so are you. I played my rented cello loudly, to drown it out, and it taunted, Your tone is too thin, you do not resonate, you’re a factory clone, you have no soul. I exaggerated my diminuendos and crescendos to compensate, but the wardrobe cello was unconvinced. If you thought you’d inherited your grandmother’s talent, think again. Being played by her was like falling in love.

  Lydia sent me home with a revised schedule: extra studies, more scales. I was to start on a concerto, a bigger piece that I could get my teeth into. I was to prepare an audition piece for the National Youth Orchestra. If I was to have a career in music, I’d better make up for lost time.

  That suited me fine; something had happened between Samantha, Megan and me, and I had empty hours in the afternoon that I spent moping and reading trashy romances. I was still friends with Samantha, but Megan was distant and entangled with Jeff. I wondered whether I had made some kind of gaffe, or whether she simply didn’t have the energy. Lately, she’d been coming to school with bags underneath her eyes, spending parts of English with her head of curls resting on her forearms. I assumed it was all those nights she spent in the Botanic Garden, under the sound shell, rolling beneath the conifer trees.

  Samantha had also found a potential boyfriend, getting a man who worked at the Manners Mall record store to source obscure music for her. She had given up the violin; the record store guy was teaching her the bass guitar. She was going to be like Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth. Samantha seemed to be still close with Megan, but when I questioned her about what was up, was Megan pregnant, had she had an abortion, she said she hadn’t the faintest idea. Samantha was going to be a Human rights lawyer or a Foreign correspondent, yet she didn’t pursue this tantalising suggestion. I thought the answer must be yes and I felt hurt that I wasn’t party to the confession. Changing the subject, Samantha asked me whether I had heard of The Smiths. When I said no, she scribbled down the names of some albums. ‘Get Mikey to find them for you,’ she said. ‘Mention my name and he might give you a discount.’

  I played Strangeways until the tape stretched; then The Queen is Dead, Meat is Murder, Hatful of Hollow and Louder than Bombs. Morrissey alone understood my solitude. Morrissey wore a hearing aid, national health glasses, a sticking plaster over his nipple. If he could affix a syringe to his flesh, he would. He was patron saint of the damaged, the loners. I started saving for a CD player.

  Miraculously, I made it into the National Youth Orchestra. So did Ursula. The rehearsal week was going to be in Wellington throughout the August holidays, and my family would be hosting a billet called Frances.

&n
bsp; She turned up on Friday night: the rehearsal was to start over the weekend, culminating in a performance the following Saturday. The billet organiser had told my mother that Frances played the oboe. She would be sitting in the swampy back of the orchestra, between the flutes and the bassoons, splitting open her oboe to shake saliva onto the carpet.

  I drove to the train station with my father, a hand-lettered sign on my lap. I kept turning over the corner, nervous about the billet’s intrusion, and by the time I had to get out of the car, the paper was crumpled.

  The night was dark and draughty and I felt small in the cavernous railway station, domed and arched as if in Europe. The girl who presented herself was even smaller. The seatbelt gaped around her and she was child-sized at the dinner table. She prodded at the macaroni cheese as if it were alive. I didn’t blame her: I hated my mother’s macaroni too. It was viscous, clogging your throat with its grainy sauce. But my sister ate platefuls of it, asking for seconds and thirds. My sister was skinny regardless of the packets of M&Ms she ate; she had a super-powered metabolism. She hid her wrappers in her room, but I found them there when I drifted in to read her diary, to thumb through her racks of sporty clothes.

  ‘So how much do you practise, Frances?’ asked my mother, as Frances cut a lettuce leaf along its veins.

  ‘About four hours a day,’ she said.

  ‘Wow,’ I said. I thought I was busting my gut doing two. ‘How do you find time?’

  ‘I play when I come home from school until dinner time,’ said Frances. ‘That gives me about three hours. I also put in another hour before breakfast.’

  How could she extract so much productive time from a day? I couldn’t practise the moment I came home from school; I had to be aimless for a while. I ate dried Weet-bix with peanut butter, cheese chunks and stuffed olives, carefully choosing items that would fill me up without blitzing my blood sugars. I admired my earrings in the mirror, I did a quiz in my Dolly magazine. Then I got my cello out, managing an hour before dinner. I put it away to set the table. After dinner, load the dishwasher, but not without fighting with my sister as to who had bunked off the most, and who should be doing the most cleaning. And then, homework, TV if I was lucky.