“Lily, I’m Trent.”
“You’re ‘Trent’! You’re ‘Trent’! Oh, Roger, how proud Papa would be!”
The Maestro had invited a group of friends to a musicale in his studio on the following night. He was introducing three of his pupils, including Lily. Roger had always known that the dreamy absent-spirited Lily could sing beautifully. What astonished him now was the noble utterance. The breadth. She set the window-panes rattling with passionate declarations of joy and grief. He thought: “How proud Mama will be!”
Roger became a favorite in the Maestro’s home. Signora Lauri enrolled him among her sons—the three living and the two dead. His chair was beside hers at the mighty nine-course Milanese dinners—the family’s and the guests’ anniversaries, the birthdays of Garibaldi and Verdi and Manzoni.
The Maestro was in his late sixties. Long ago he had been marooned in New York through the bankruptcy of an opera troupe which he had served as assistant conductor, chorus master, and occasional baritone. From there he was invited to Chicago to teach singing in a conservatory that had also failed. He had stayed on and prospered. Every five years the entire family returned to Milan to visit their relatives. He was tall, thin, and as erect as a drill master. He dressed with the greatest care. He wore a toupet; his superb mustaches were dyed and perfumed. His expression was that of a lion tamer whose beasts were constantly in revolt; lightning flickered in his eyes. Signora Lauri’s life was not an easy one. She bore the brunt of his resentment against all that went wrong in existence. She was his unsatisfactory pupils, his dyspepsia; she brought the three-day snow and drove the thermometer to one hundred and four. Yet he was boundlessly dependent on her. If she were to die, he would dwindle to a peppery, posturing old man—old and emptied. Occasionally his impotent rage against circumstance burst forth. He heaped sarcasms upon her; he denounced her for having ruined his life, she and her wagonload of disrespectful children. She held her chin high; the glance from her eyes would wither a grapevine. The quarrels were necessary and operatic; the reconciliations were tear-drenched and very grand. Signora Lauri understood it all. That was marriage. She had the ring and a home and she had borne him ten children. Her greatest trials were his infidelities and her enormous size. She once showed her son Roger the photograph of a painting by a modern master. The original hung in a gallery in Rome, she said. It showed a lovely girl of sixteen, standing by a parapet over Lake Como. Roger looked up at her inquiringly; she reddened and nodded slightly. “La vita, la vita.”
The maestro spoke a number of languages with a singing teacher’s precision and with the relish of one for whom languages are themselves artistic creations. It became his custom to lead Roger into his studio after dinner. He was in the mood for conversation. Lily and his daughters begged to join them, but were sternly told that the time had come for “men’s talk.”
Roger had found another Saturn.
What is art?
Roger had a very low opinion of art. Chicago was full of it. The homes of the rich (weddings and suicides) and the choicer brothels (mayhem) that he had penetrated as a reporter abounded in art—bronze girls holding up lamps, paintings of ladies getting ready to take a bath. There were a lot of cows in art and monks holding wine glasses up to the light. Catholic churches were full of art. Most art, though, was about pretty girls.
“Mr. Frazier, works of art are the only satisfactory products of civilization. History, in itself, has nothing to show. History is the record of man’s repeated failures to extricate himself from his incorrigible nature. Those who see progress in it are as deluded as those who see a gradual degeneration. A few steps forward, a few steps back. Human nature is like the ocean, unchanging, unchangeable. Today’s calm, tomorrow’s tempest—but it’s the same ocean. Man is as he is, as he was, as he always will be. But what are works of art?
“Let me tell you a story:
“My family has lived for centuries in Monza, a town near Milan. One day my mother decided to take us children into the city to see the paintings in the great Brera Gallery. Wherever my mother went she was accompanied by an old family servant whom we children called Aunt Nanina. Zia Nanina had never been in a picture gallery and would never have thought of entering one. Such places were for rich people, people who could read and write, who talked all the time about l’arte. But lo! Great heavens, suddenly, at the Brera, amid all those Madonnas and Holy Families, Zia Nanina was completely at home. She was as busy as she could be, crossing herself and bobbing up and down and saying her prayers. Did Zia Nanina think those paintings were beautiful? Oh, yes—but we Italians use the word bello four hundred times a day. For her those pictures were filled with something far more important than beauty. They were filled with power.”
“How do you mean, Maestro?”
“There on the wall was the Virgin. One day our family—her family—was crossing Lake Como in a small boat. A terrible storm arose. We would surely drown. Who prayed like the dynamo of a great ocean liner? Zia Nanina. And the Holy Mother parted the clouds and pulled our boat safely to shore with Her own sacred hands. What power! There on the wall was a Saint Joseph. One day when I was seven a fishbone stuck in my throat. I was strangling. I turned purple. But Saint Joseph pulled that fishbone out. Zia Nanina was aware of the power of those exalted persons every day of her life—as were my mother and uncle, as are my wife and daughters to this day.
“I don’t believe in God. I believe that those celebrated men and women—Mary of Nazareth and her family—are now each a pinch of dust, like all the billions of men and women who have died. But the representations of such beings are man’s greatest achievement.
“You have been in this room before. Look about you. What do you see?”
“Your collection, Maestro. Statues and paintings . . . ?”
“I don’t believe in God, but I love the gods. Each of these figures and paintings was made to represent that power, more than that: to transmit that power. Every work in this room has been at one time an object of fear or love or of urgent appeal—in most cases of all three emotions at once. Nothing here was intended for mere ornament or decoration. This is from Mexico. . . . ? These are the Great Twins. They have lain in the salt water about three thousand years, shipwrecked. Sailors made their last prayers to them. . . . ? This is an African mask worn in dances for victory or rain. . . . ? Here is an engraved gem. Take it over to the light. It shows Mercury—Hermes Psychopompos—leading the soul of a dead woman to the fields of the blest. Beauty?”
“Yes.”
“Power?”
Roger looked at it for a time and said, “Yes.”
“And this . . . ? a Khmer head from Angkor Wat—the half-closed eyes, the smile that never tires.”
“That’s Buddha,” said Roger abruptly.
“Who can count the prayers that have ascended to gods who do not exist? Mankind has himself created sources of help where there is no help and sources of consolation where there is no consolation. Yet such works as these are the only satisfying products of culture.
“Save sacred art
And sacred song,
Nothing endures
For long.”
There was a knock at the door. The Maestro was called to the telephone. Roger turned his back on the objects and went to the window—the lights of the city. He said to himself, “He’s missed something. He’s forgotten something. I’ll find it. I must find it.”
On Sundays Roger called for his sister at the church where she had been singing. They had dinner together at the Alt-Heidelberg restaurant and spent the rest of the afternoon in the country with little Giovannino, who, by July at nine months, was on the threshold of walking and of talking Italian. He lived in a household of adoring women and took to his uncle with clamorous delight. He seemed to have the idea that only a man could teach a man to walk. He crawled ten miles a day and was becoming thoroughly impatient with it.
Sunday dinners at the Alt-Heidelberg (June, 1905):
“My clothes? I’m a pir
ate. There’s a girl at the club who sells them at Towne and Carruther’s. I go into her department and try on a lot of dresses. She pretends she doesn’t know me and says, ‘Yes, madam’ or ‘No, madam.’ And I steal the ideas and we make them at home. The materials are awfully expensive, but we know where to get mill ends. We have lots of fun. We help all the girls in the club dress and they help us. Roger, a girl alone has to be awfully bright just to live.” (Roger wrote a “pudding” called “Take a Letter, Miss Spencer.”)
“Roger, sometimes I think I’ll go crazy because I don’t know anything. I want to learn every language in the world. I want to know how women thought a thousand years ago—and what electricity is and how the telephone works—and about money and banks. I don’t understand why Papa never thought about better schools for us. All sorts of people ask me to tea and dinner, but I tell them I have a sore throat. I stay home and read. Even when we’re making dresses one of the girls reads aloud to us. Last night there were eight of us working until midnight. We were all crowded together in my tiny room and we took turns reading an English lady’s Letters from Turkey. What do you read?”
Another Sunday (July):
“Oh, yes, I’ll sing opera, but I won’t really like it. Most of the heroines in opera are such geese. I’m really a concert singer and an oratorio singer. But I’ll sing opera to make money.”
“You could make enough money singing what you want to. Why should you make more?”
Lily looked up at him in surprise. “Why, for my children.”
“Your husband would support your children, wouldn’t he?”
“Roger! Roger! Don’t talk to me about husbands! I’m going to have a dozen children and I’m going to love every one of their fathers, but I’m never going to be married to anyone. Marriage is a worn-out old custom like owning slaves or adoring royal families. I believe that there won’t be any marriages in a hundred years. Besides, I pity the man who’d be married to me. I love my singing and my babies and my learning things and my plans. . . . ? I now have a Polish towhead. I’m going to have two Americans—twins. And a French girl. And a Spanish boy . . . ? and adopt so many!”
“Is that what you mean by your plans?”
She paused and looked at him gravely. She carried with her a great square velvet handbag to hold her music. She leaned over and drew from it a sheaf of what appeared to be architectural drawings. She placed several before him in silence.
“What are those?” she asked softly.
He studied them. “A hospital? Schools?”
She drew out a scrapbook. On the cover was pasted the head of the Christ child from the “Sistine Madonna.” The first pages were given over to portraits of Friedrich Froebel, and Jean-Frédéric Oberlin. These were followed by cuttings from magazines and books—more ground plans and details of construction from hospitals, orphanages, hotels, villas, playgrounds. She laughed at his inquiring face. The guests in the restaurant laughed.
“That’s my city of children. I’m going to go all over the world singing those silly Isoldes and Normas to make money for it.” Laughter. “Isolde has a husband and a lover and all she can think about is love, but there’s no word about children. Norma has some children and she prowls about with a dagger to kill them—just to spite their father. I think my city is going to be in Switzerland by a lake with mountains all around us. And I’m going to plant a grove of oak trees, like Papa’s. I’m going to choose all the teachers myself.—Won’t it be wonderful? Can’t you hear the children from here? Now can you see why I’m happy all the time?”
“Because of your plans.”
At times these conversations became strained. Lily felt driven to review their childhood, to probe into “all that” at “The Elms.” Her judgments were without indulgence. Roger was not ready.
“Lily, I don’t want to talk about those things.”
“All right, I won’t, but I’ve got to understand them. I don’t know what you men are like, but we girls don’t begin to live until we’re pretty clear in our heads about our fathers and mothers.”
“Please change the subject, Lily.”
Her eyes rested on him thoughtfully. To herself she said, “That’s Mama’s fault.”
Another Sunday (August):
Roger asked that they meet for dinner on the following week after her evening service instead of at midday.
“Roger, I’m not free after evening service. After it’s over I go away with a friend of mine on his boat. Because of my work I can’t go away on the weekend. We come back on Tuesday morning. On Monday he simply doesn’t show up at his office. He’s a good friend and a perfectly nice man and he teaches me things. He has a famous collection of paintings and sculpture and every Sunday night he brings some samples to the boat and lots of heavy books.”
“Not the Maestro!”
“No, Roger! No! No, indeed! Someone younger. And healthier. And American. And very rich.”
Other Sundays (September):
“Roger, I’m going to have to go to New York.”
“To live?”
“Yes, I’ll have to find another singing teacher.” Laughter. “You see, I’m going to have another baby—twins, I think. I can’t explain it to the club or to my congregations, so I’d better leave.”
Roger waited.
“He’ll be pretty glad to get rid of me, I think. Men get tired of me—not because I’m horrid, but because they can’t understand me. I make them uncomfortable. I’m not impressed by the things that most men boast about. He’s all confused—he’s mortified—because I won’t accept even a little pearl pin from him. For a year and a half I’ll let him give me some money for the babies,—after all, the babies will be partly his.” Laughter. “Besides, he’s taught me almost everything he knows.—Roger listen: Having babies is very good for the voice. These days I’m singing better than I’ve ever sung in my life. I frighten myself.”
“Lily, I have an idea. Papa’s in Alaska or South America or Australia. He can’t write to Coaltown; he can’t write to us because he doesn’t know where we are. You’re going to get to be well-known. Maybe I will. Let’s take our real names again.”
“YES!”
“And to make it double sure, let’s take our crazy middle names: the famous singer Scolastica Ashley, the rising newspaper man Berwyn Ashley.”
“You’re a genius! You’re a genius!” She kissed him. She walked about the table twice. “I’ve always hated all that hugger-mugger about invented names. I’m Scolastica Ashley, the convict’s daughter, and if they want to throw me out of their churches, let them do it. Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I’ll begin tomorrow.—A letter from Papa, soon!”
“I think you should wait until after your concert. At your first concert you wouldn’t want a lot of people gawking at you for that. Let’s do it the day after your concert.”
Mrs. Temple’s concert was repeated ten days later by Miss Scolastica Ashley, who was also heard in Milwaukee, Madison, and Galena. Trent’s readers were informed that thereafter his articles would appear over his true name. The startling announcement came too late to change the title page of Berwyn Ashley’s book Trent’s Chicago. Lily invited her mother to Chicago to attend the concert. She received an affectionate letter in return, wishing her great success. Her mother regretted that it was impossible for her to leave the boardinghouse at that time.
“Roger, can I talk about Coaltown?”
“Yes.”
“Papa didn’t shoot Mr. Lansing. He didn’t even shoot him by accident. Someone else did. Who and how I don’t know, but I’m certain of it. I went to the Public Library and read the newspapers about it—thousands and thousands of words. I was looking for an idea, but I couldn’t find a thing. But you can. Someday you can clear that up. There was one thing I noticed in those papers. They were full of what a fine man Mr. Lansing was—he ran the mine, he was head of all the clubs and lodges. You know that’s not true. He was a dreadful boastful creature. He was cheap, and I’ll bet he was lazy. We all prete
nded not to see it because we liked Mrs. Lansing so much. Roger, he must have had enemies. Maybe he was hard to the miners, maybe he was cruel to them.”
Roger was following her gravely. He said slowly, “Porky knew everything that went on in town. He would have told me.”
“Well, now I’m going to tell you something that I’ve told to only one person—Miss Doubkov.”
She told him about the anonymous letters. “It’s all nasty nonsense. Papa didn’t go to Fort Barry oftener than once a year and he came back on the afternoon train. But I now think that many people in town really believed all that. It helps explain why so few people stood by Papa and why so few people came to see Mama. I think Mrs. Lansing must have got some of those letters, too—they were so full of hatred toward her.—Who was the murderer?”
“And who were the rescuers?”
The first Sunday in November:
“Lily, you can say anything you want about the old days in Coaltown.”
“I don’t want to, if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“I’ll listen. I don’t have to agree with you, but I’ll listen. Shoot!—What was that you said—with a sneer—about Mama’s adoring Papa? It’s an idiotic expression.”
“It is. I didn’t say it with a sneer. It’s too serious. Roger, I’m trying to get educated. I don’t think a person is free to learn anything until he’s begun to understand himself. And, as I said to you before, that includes understanding your father and mother. Mama worshiped Papa and as a result she was not a noticing person. Mama has many fine qualities, but Mama’s a very strange woman.”
“So are you!”
Lily laughed the full octave and a half. “Yes, everybody at this table is strange.”
“Go on with what you were saying.”
“One day, months ago, the Maestro made his youngest daughter—Adriana—leave the table. She’d merely said that she adored her new shoes; she thought they were divine. He said those were religious words and that they had nothing to do with shoes. He turned to me and said that they had nothing to do with human beings either. He warned me to beware of husbands and wives who adored one another. Such persons haven’t grown up, he said. No human being is adorable. The early Hebrews were quite right to condemn idolatry. Women who adore their husbands throw a thousand little ropes around them. They rob them of their freedom. They lull them to sleep. It’s wonderful to own a god, to put him in your pocket. That day my education took a little jump forward.”
The Eighth Day Page 28