Strange Sweet Song

by Rule, Adi

  * * *

  Sing doesn’t know how many people have gathered for the dress rehearsal. The glaring stage lights make it impossible to see into the dark house. She steps onto the set’s second level, a faux stone balcony with narrow wooden steps leading down to the floor. The cast members already assembled onstage, farmers and merchants, look straight out of a fairy tale. Sing carries a prop pail of milk but wears her DC uniform, not the ruffly white gown that is still too long and slender for her.

  What amazes her most about these first few minutes as Angelique is how well she knows the orchestral parts. Every time she has learned a role, she has become more than familiar with all the other facets of the opera—other characters’ story lines and music, the preludes and interludes, the music’s historical context, the designers’ visions. It is what professionals do. Her mother never sang a role she hadn’t studied for at least two years.

  But this music is almost a part of her consciousness, like language. She knows the oboe part the way she knows her alphabet, effortlessly. She knows what the second horn is going to say before it says it. All of Angelique is a lush drawing she could produce entirely from memory, without even a thought.

  This is how my father knows music, she realizes. Every piece he conducts.

  But as she stands on the pretend balcony, a strangeness overtakes her. There is no Angelique now without her. Were she to shut her mouth and shut her eyes, the songs wouldn’t come. The orchestra would play naked, without its mistress.

  Maestro Keppler conducts magnificently. His artistry and command rival those of any of the celebrities she has seen, even her father. He cues her clearly. She starts to sing. They communicate with each other across the stage and the bright light, professional to professional, and Angelique comes to life.

  It is easier in performance, or near performance. She is not nervous anymore, and she doesn’t forget anything, not for a moment. The rehearsal is tiring, but her voice stays strong. She breathes. She stands up straight. She looks into Prince Elbert’s florid face and wonders how on earth she could ever have let him intimidate her. Only Marta breaks the spell, ever so slightly, when they share the spotlight. She is not as good an actress as Sing thought; quiet frost radiates from behind her elaborate Tree Maiden makeup.

  But for the most part, Sing’s focus remains sharp. Even “Quand il se trouvera” goes well. It isn’t perfect, but it is enough. It will be enough, in two days, to impress Harland Griss.

  When the final curtain falls and the house lights come up, Sing collapses into the metal folding chair backstage. The performers chatter as they pack up and leave, the shiny beams of the new theater still ringing with Durand’s glorious score.

  But all Sing can hear is the five-chord introduction to Angelique’s most famous aria, played not by a string section, but on a piano. By a master.

  Fifty-three

  SING LIES ON HER BED in the warm light of her dragonfly lamp. Moby-Dick and a stack of sappy novels sit untouched on her bedside table.

  All she can see in her mind are Daysmoor’s fingers on black and white keys. She can’t think about Angelique. Something isn’t right. Something she expected to happen today in dress rehearsal—didn’t. But she can’t even name it.

  The cold teardrop rests against her throat, its chain bunched at the base of her neck. She puts a hand to it, wondering. I wish…, she begins in her head. I wish … But she can’t finish the sentence.

  “Before, I was used to you being my only friend, Woolly,” she says, giving him a squeeze. “But everything’s all messed up now. I don’t think I could get used to it again.”

  Woolly’s dull button eyes seem sympathetic. Sing rolls onto her side, holding the worn gray lamb to her chest. He pushes against the teardrop and it digs into her skin.

  “I think I know what Zhin was saying, now,” she says to him. “About going out and getting what you want instead of wishing for it. I think a wish—a real wish—must be for something impossible. Something unthinkable. Otherwise it’s just you looking for an easy way to—to wherever it is you think you want to go.” She looks into Woolly’s placid face.

  “That was the problem, wasn’t it, with Barbara da Navelli? She had a wish granted she didn’t need. The Felix would have just torn out her throat.”

  She turns off her lamp and tries to sleep, but her ears are filled with the dark introduction to Angelique’s aria.

  After an hour, she sits up. She must hear Daysmoor play again. Before time can move forward. His playing is the only thing that makes sense to her right now.

  That means finding him, now, in the middle of the night. Sneaking into the apprentice quarters. And if she is caught, then what? Another write-up? Another censure? Expulsion?

  But this is about music. No one could question her intentions. How could anyone hear Daysmoor play and not do anything to hear him again? Sure, he’s a jerk, but after today—well, she feels … different.

  She gets out of her soft pajamas and gathers the pieces of her uniform from the floor, feeling the familiar squeeze of the tight kneesocks, the itchy waistband of the skirt settling into place on her chafed skin. Not that wearing official attire would count for much if she got caught breaking rules again, but it has to be better than being caught out of uniform. She closes her door quietly and drapes a wool scarf over her coat.

  She doesn’t expect many people to be up and about this late during the school week, though there are always a few students who prefer practicing at night. It’s too bad the practice rooms are in Archer, where Daysmoor’s tower is, and she’ll run the risk of seeing someone. But she can always pretend to be working on her pieces—she could have legitimate business there.

  There is no one in Hud’s lobby as she slips out, feeling like a criminal already even though there is nothing wrong with a student taking a nighttime stroll. The conservatory isn’t a prison, after all. A few windows still glow in the dormitory and across the way in Hector Hall.

  In the middle of the vast, dark quad, she imagines herself adrift at sea, the campus buildings as towering ocean liners. Light and warmth spill from the portholes in their black hulls, except for the massive ghost ship that is St. Augustine’s, jagged and bleak in the gloom. She hurries by.

  She can hear muffled music coming from some of the practice rooms as she reaches Archer’s metal doors, glad to shut out the darkness at her back. Fluorescent lights flicker, the ugly gray industrial carpeting smells like mold, the world is real again.

  She pads down the overly bright hallway. The only two rooms with decent pianos are occupied even now. The satin sound of a trumpet comes from within one of them—why does a trumpet need the good piano room? Still, most of the rooms emanate only silence.

  It is easy to see the strange tower from the outside, not as easy to find it from the inside. But the door at the end of the hall is labeled NO STUDENTS, so it is as good a place to start as any. It is not locked, and within she finds an echoey stairwell with a hard rubber floor. Up is good.

  Just as she steps through the doorway, a voice startles her.

  “Sing?”

  She turns, heart beating unreasonably loudly. Jenny is coming out of the room nearest her, clarinet in hand.

  “Hi.” Sing hopes Jenny doesn’t notice the quaver in her voice.

  Jenny eyes her. “What are you doing?”

  Sing is at a loss. What is she doing? Sneaking into the apprentice quarters to find Apprentice Daysmoor, of all people? To ask him to give her a private concert?

  She feels like a drug addict caught rooting through someone’s medicine cabinet, embarrassed, no sane explanation. And determined to keep rooting.

  “I … wanted to practice.”

  “Yeah, well, those are the stairs.”

  “Oh … yeah.”

  “You gonna practice on the stairs?”

  “No.”

  Jenny gives her an unreadable look, then gestures. “The piano in this one’s pretty good as long as you don’t need the bottom octave.
I’m done.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” Sing closes the stairwell door and steps toward the practice room. “Um, see you tomorrow!”

  “Sure.” Jenny heads down the hallway to the main entrance. It wasn’t exactly a friendly interaction, but it wasn’t hostile, either. Sing watches her go.

  When Jenny has left, Sing slips through the doorway and runs up the stairs on tiptoe.

  Now is when she must be worried. If she meets an apprentice—or worse, a faculty member—she will have no excuse for her presence. Except maybe I was looking for the bathroom. Pretty weak.

  She peeks out onto the second floor, identical to the first: the apprentice and faculty practice rooms. They probably have decent pianos.

  The stairs end at the third floor, which means there must be a different entrance to the tower. The shadowy hallway has fewer doors than the other floors. The carpeting here is thicker and smells of detergent rather than mold.

  Her breathing shallow, Sing creeps along the corridor. On each of the doors is a brass plate as in the dormitory, only they are etched with names instead of numbers. Garcia, Hutchins, Wilson … She steals from doorway to doorway, looking for a blank one or possibly STAIRS.

  When she comes to the last door on the left, she is surprised to see Daysmoor written on the little plate. It is slightly difficult to read, tarnished and discolored.

  The hall suddenly feels very quiet. Will her knocking on the door rouse the other apprentices? Would they report her?

  Will he report her?

  All the little thoughts she should have had before deciding to do this creep into her mind. What if he is asleep? What if he is angry? What if he gives her another censure, or mocks her, or tells her he will never play for her again?

  All this she thinks even as her hand rises and raps three times on the door.

  Nothing happens for what feels like a very long time.

  What if he isn’t home?

  She has just about decided to turn away when the door opens and Apprentice Daysmoor is there. He is there, and she is there.

  Only he isn’t Apprentice Daysmoor right now. He can’t be. Instead of stooping and scowling, he is standing comfortably straight and looking slightly bewildered. Instead of the requisite voluminous conservatory robes, he is wearing dark green sweatpants.

  Only sweatpants.

  Sing doesn’t know how to feel about this. She remembers being held against his chest and her face starts to heat up.

  What can she say to him? What was she thinking, taking such a risk to come here? This whole thing feels strange now. How can she just show up and ask him to play? Her eyes are drawn to an intricate tattoo of ivy tendrils winding up his left arm, wrist to shoulder.… Who is he?

  He says, “Miss da Navelli. Um, hello.” He glances down, apparently just becoming aware of his appearance, then looks along the hallway. “Why are you here? You’re not supposed to be up here.”

  She finds her voice at last. “Are you going to report me?”

  His face relaxes a little. “Did you come just to ask that?”

  “No. I was … well, you mentioned you liked Brahms, and … I was wondering if you knew, um, the Intermezzo in A.”

  She is ready for the response. You came all the way out here to ask me that? or What’s the matter with you? or Why don’t you go talk nonsense with your friends?

  But instead he asks, quite seriously, “Which one?”

  “Oh! Oh, um, opus 118.”

  Stupid, she thinks. Such a popular piece. She should have mentioned one of his little-known works—that would have been more impressive—but she just blurted out the first one that came to mind. It has always been one of her favorites.

  He looks at her a moment, considering, then says, “You’d better come up, then.”

  Behind him is a dark staircase. She follows him up, with only the most fleeting thoughts about vampires as she hears the door close with a soft hiss. They are in almost total blackness now, climbing to Apprentice Daysmoor’s storied lonely tower.

  She stumbles a little and hears his footsteps stop. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so used to these stairs at night. Here.” She finds his hand, which isn’t cold and clammy like death, as she’d imagined, but warm like a regular person’s. As if to soothe her, though she has tried hard to hide her uncertainty, he says, “This used to be the president’s quarters, this tower, before Hector was converted to faculty apartments. That’s why it’s a little different.”

  “Oh,” she says, relieved to hear her own whisper, that she hasn’t disappeared in all this darkness.

  And then light. When they reach the landing, Daysmoor pushes open a door, and Sing is astonished to find not a crumbling, cobweb-covered relic, but quite a modern, cozy room with a high ceiling and a spiral staircase to one side. A small kitchen and fireplace, a comfortable chair, rugs, books; nothing particularly strange or hostile.

  “I have three levels,” he says proudly. She follows him up into a bedroom, spare and tidy. He grabs a gray T-shirt from a basket of folded laundry and pulls it on with a serious little throat clearing. Then up again to a large circular room with tall windows all around. It must be spectacular during the day, filled with sunlight, looking out over the campus and the forest—you could probably see all the way down to Dunhammond. Now it is lit by yellow sconces reflecting warmly off the window glass.

  The room contains an old grand piano and little else except a couple of high-backed chairs and some stacks of music. Daysmoor gestures to a chair, and Sing sits. He is silent as he seats himself on the piano bench, but after he has looked at the keys for a moment, he says, “This is the one you mean?” and begins to play.

  When the first notes sound, Sing no longer questions her request. Apprentice Daysmoor is not mocking this little piece, and he is not mocking her. He is just playing.

  He doesn’t play the intermezzo as though it is tired, as though it has lost its luster through too much exposure to the air. He plays seriously, attending to every note like a shepherd who refuses to lose even the weakest sheep. He plays with joy, the patterns of his breathing mimicking the depths and heights of the music.

  He plays with devotion.

  All this Sing hears as she sits in the high-backed chair. She watches his shoulders, the outline of his collarbone under gray cotton, the way his hair falls. She can’t see his long fingers, but she remembers them.

  But mostly she listens. Her eyes are open, but she doesn’t see. Her mind is engaged, focused, but color, shape, and image are gone; the lines of the piece exist in time only, overwhelming all other dimensions, blotting them out, flowing over them like glossy ribbons. Tears well, induced not by thought or pain or happiness, but by the perfect sound that courses through her without design or name. And still she listens.

  When he has finished, neither of them moves. Sing doesn’t know how many silent minutes have passed when he finally rises and crosses the floor. He doesn’t stand too close to her chair. His voice, when it comes, seems lower and more ravaged than usual. “Can I play something else for you?”

  There is something different about his face, eyes lowered, muscles relaxed. She thinks she recognizes this awkwardness; he has revealed too much. The world has vaporized around him, and he is grasping at it, pulling it back.

  “No.” She rises and he nods, taking a step back. “But thank you.”

  She means it, and he smiles. She has never seen him really smile before and realizes he wears a party mask, too—a mask of arrogance and ugliness. And she understands why, because he is not wearing it now. Now he appears as he really is, competent and handsome—someone bigger than an apprenticeship, bigger than the conservatory. Someone out of place.

  It is shocking. Apprentice Plays-poor. How could anyone who heard Daysmoor play fail to recognize his mastery, his passion?

  But no one does hear him play, she realizes. No one ever has.

  “Why…” She doesn’t want to say the wrong thing, but she has to know. “Why aren’t you enteri
ng the Gloria Stewart competition?”

  He looks at her for a long moment. “I’m not allowed.”

  She doesn’t know what she expected him to say, but it certainly wasn’t this. She steps toward him, the night she met him in the forest coming back to her—a vision of the Maestro’s arm firmly around his apprentice’s shoulders, steering him back into the darkness. “It’s something to do with a wish, isn’t it?” She puts a hand to the teardrop at her throat.

  He is silent for a moment but looks up with a puzzled expression. “I did make a wish, once.” But he doesn’t say any more.

  The crystal is so cold, it slices. Sing pulls her hand away. “She cried for you,” she says. “Did you know that?”

  He frowns. “What?”

  “The Felix,” she says. “That’s how she grants wishes. She—cries. The wish is a tear.”

  Daysmoor’s eyes fix on the crystal. “This little thing?”

  An image is forming in Sing’s mind. “You’re not allowed to play,” she says. “Is it because … is it because he doesn’t want you to play?”

  The apprentice looks at her, his features shadowed. She expects him to feign ignorance. But instead he says, “You mean George.” Daysmoor closes his eyes for a moment. “He is a brilliant musician,” he says, “and he was once a kind man. Kinder and more passionate than anyone I’ve ever met. But he has changed over the years.”

  She is taking a risk, but she can’t help it. “He never wanted you to play, did he?” she says. “He wanted to keep you here. And something gave him the power to do it.”

  “You’re assuming a lot.” Daysmoor steps back, and Sing knows she has gone too far.

  “I should go,” she says, glancing back at the spiral staircase.

  His focus returns. “You’d better take the outside stairs. It’s safer. Don’t want you getting in trouble again.” He moves to an arched glass door, almost indistinguishable from the tall windows, and when he opens it Sing sees a wide stone balcony. She follows him outside, and he gestures to the narrow fire escape that zigzags down the tower. “Not too scary for you, are they?” His voice is easy now.