This is My Song
Page 16
He nodded politely. A phalanx of chatterers was marching out of the cinema so he edged towards the road, Soraya following.
‘Did you like the movie?’ she asked.
Joe shrugged. ‘Filled in a couple of hours,’ he said.
‘It was very bad,’ Soraya announced. ‘There was nothing to believe.’
Nothing to believe … Joe enjoyed that. He and Soraya stood for a moment, layered and awkward. There were people everywhere, calling, milling, hugging, scheming. Too many people, too much yappity stupidity –
Joe said, ‘Do you like ice-cream? Gelato?’
Soraya smiled, yes. They crossed Grey Street at the lights, crossed Little Stanley and edged into the South Bank precinct where there was a gelato van. Joe ordered two cups, vanilla for her, hazelnut for him, and they carried the cups over to a bench.
Soft grass, soft sunshine. It was the kind of afternoon that Brisbane did best, warm-aired and barefoot and skimming with possibility.
Soraya said politely, ‘You have always lived in Brisbane?’
‘Born here,’ Joe told her. ‘But my mother is from Canada.’
‘Oh yes.’ Soraya scooped a wedge of vanilla. ‘This was also a place to go. When we left Africa.’
‘Canada was?’
‘Yes. But I am glad we came here. It is a good home.’
He hadn’t expected her to think of Brisbane – Australia? – in that way. Home was such a permanent word; where we’re born, where one day we leave, another day return –
She said, ‘You are surprised?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Your face,’ she said.
Joe grimaced at his own foolishness. He leaned into the sunshine and thought to ask, ‘Do you miss Africa?’
‘Not where I lived,’ she told him. ‘But Africa itself? I do not know.’
But Ms Wicks indicated –
‘Perhaps I will visit one day and find out.’ Soraya looked around. She said, ‘But now, this is our home.’
Light splintering off the river. Twists of frangipani pinking the air, children playing soccer, walking a balance rope. Across the street, couples quietly choosing a café, a life.
‘Home,’ said Soraya again, her smile edged with vanilla.
He gave her the photocopy.
‘Your grandfather?’ she asked.
‘A long time ago,’ Joe told her.
Ms Wicks pushed tentatively at the notes on the piano, stopped, frowned, pushed again, gathered the notes together to form a pattern.
‘Simple,’ she said, ‘but effective. Lovely melody. Okay, let me play it through then we’ll add the lyrics.’
Slow, at first. Like a child, thought Joe, like Essie, rolling and crawling before raising herself on unsteady legs, taking a step, taking another step, walking unsteadily, walking more confidently, beginning to run, run further, run far –
‘Yes,’ said Ms Wicks exultantly, ‘yes. Now, we might just add a repeat –’
The day that Nash had left, pale-faced, suddenly thin Annie had strode through each room in the farmhouse. ‘Sorry,’ she’d called a number of times, perhaps to Joe, who was pretending to read in the sleepout, perhaps to each room, each set of walls. ‘Sorry … sorry … sorry!’ Silence before she’d returned to the lounge room. Joe had heard drawers opening, clicking and crunching. He’d left the sleepout, found his mother digging deep into their nest of CDs. Some had been thrown brutally onto the floor, their split cases exposing the silver discs like innards. Others were scattered on the couch, the more fortunate pushed to the sides or back of the drawers.
‘Mum, don’t. Please –’
‘This one!’
Her eyes had been intense and coruscating, like those of a creature who is at once tormentor and victim. The CD had been rammed into their dusty player. Annie had twisted the volume dial then stood and waited, as if for some kind of proclamation.
The music rang out, stentorian at first, rich with blood and serum. Big notes, chasers, bodies racing across dark landscapes, others following stealthily behind. He heard light breaking to a madness, flashes of green-red, white-black, silver-gold … radiance and desire, a parade through different kinds of wilderness, the climb to the top of the distant hill and view back, view out, the glory of victory, the compromises of that same victory … it could have been an entire life, summarised in seven minutes.
Later, much later, when Ms Wicks played the same piece during Music elective one day, Joe was told that it was Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Despite the gaggle around him he listened alone, transfixed, as did she before raising her eyes and saying, ‘Joy and grief, people. Joy and grief.’
Or – love and sorrow. That was certainly a possibility.
‘Joe,’ she said now, ‘will you sing, please?’
It came from a place that he had not previously known about.
Look up, look up,
The sparrows fly,
One thousand birds
Across that blue sky.
One thousand throats
Filled with freedom’s cry,
Look up, look up,
The sparrows fly.
‘Great!’ she cried, plunging her fingers into the piano. ‘Keep going!’
Look up, look up,
The sparrows fly,
One hundred birds
Across that red sky.
One hundred throats
Filled with captive cry,
But look up, look up,
The sparrows still fly.
That’s it, she told him, you’ve found it, found it, and Joe agreed. He had, he really had, although he wasn’t sure how to be with such a discovery, whether it was measured as a new kind of happiness or a new kind of agony … neither, he decided. Sometimes things must occupy a space that exists beyond language or explanation. They just are.
‘Bel Canto?’ said Ms Wicks, after the second run-through.
‘With Soraya,’ Joe suggested and she agreed immediately, rocked back on her stool and agreed.
Mid-term presentations, three minutes, topic of your own choice.
‘Hear this,’ said Mr Bridgman, surprisingly animated. ‘I dislike being bored. Understand, Mr Turton? Miss Mackenzie? For me, boredom is a kind of death. It’s dark in there and you don’t get to go home at the end. So I’d be grateful if you lot could keep me alive a few hours longer by selecting a scintillating topic and speaking about that topic in a scintillating manner. Savvy?’
Turton, why rugby league is kick-butt. Mackenzie, reintroducing the death penalty for homophobes. Smokers. Cat owners.
‘Who’s left?’ asked Mr Bridgman wearily. ‘Joe? Ready to roll?’
‘Go, Psycho,’ said Turton. ‘The history of cows. Can’t wait.’
Betrayal, on a grand scale. Joe stood to a chorus of mooing – ‘Shut it now,’ warned Mr Bridgman, ‘or risk more detention than you ever thought possible.’
Joe went to the front of the classroom, faced their hungry, cynical eyes, fixed his own gaze to a midpoint on the farthest wall and said, ‘My grandfather died a few weeks ago.’
Nothing. Not that he cared. Better to draw familiar, comforting colours into his mind and continue. ‘I didn’t know him very well and he didn’t leave much behind. There were some photos and there was a song. My grandfather wrote a song.’
He said, ‘I’ve been thinking, even if you did nothing else in your life, writing a song would be a pretty good thing to do. It would be a contribution. Without that song, the world would be a bit emptier and a bit more silent.’
He said, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do when I leave school. I don’t know what my career will be or what uni course I might like or if I’ll travel to different places or join a group or become someone useful or even important. I don’t know any of the answers to the questions that you’re supposed to care about when you’re our age. Whenever people say, I’m going to be an aeronautical engineer or I’m going to grow carrots in Mongolia, I think, how can you be so sure? You don’t know, you
can never know. Things change, every minute. Certainty is temporary.’
Good line, close to his mother’s heart. He let it drift a while, a banner in the sky, then he said, ‘I’ve decided that, if nothing else, I want to be like my grandfather. He wrote a song and I’d like to do that too. Maybe, one day, someone else will sing it. Maybe lots of people will sing it. If not, that’s okay. The point is, it’ll be there because I wrote it. The song will exist. The world will be less silent and less ugly. And that’s all that really matters.’
Joe sat down to thin, regulation applause. His legs were spongy. Mr Bridgman called Molly Stevens, who spoke with capably constructed passion about abortion versus right-to-life, then he called James Chang, who gave a funny speech about deliberately teaching his Chinese grandparents the wrong English words for different items in the kitchen, including urinal for rice cooker. Everyone laughed, including Mr Bridgman, and for once they got out of class on time.
They met before school, during school, after school. Ms Wicks added texture to the melody.
‘Is that okay?’ she asked anxiously, and Joe nodded yes, you understand these things, let’s build the song.
It was in his blood now – no, more: it was his blood. Joe remembered his mother’s description of the goshawk as it had climbed and screamed and swooped down to the vee of her arms. He understood how her heart must have been, that thrilling, outsized beat, and he thought, this is my goshawk, this is my song.
‘Both of you,’ said Ms Wicks, ‘on the first chorus.’
And all around …
The icy wind blows,
And all around …
The black of the crow,
And all around …
Cold stone, hot light,
And all around …
Down comes the night!
He felt new flex in his voice, at first following Soraya then learning to work with her, to provide same colour, or different shade, or opposing colour, or highlights. The robot had been all but exiled, he knew that. It was exhausting but gloriously so, because this was more than singing – this was story, existence.
Neither without the other. We live a particular way, at times of our own choosing, at times not, and that is our story. His grandfather had been right, thought Joe. Drifting between those wavering lines of love and sorrow; how it must be, how it had always been.
They met at Fraise in Melbourne Street. When Joe ordered a milkshake and a sausage roll, the waitress beamed and called him ‘Sweetie’.
‘Nothing for me,’ said Nash.
His father was distracted, constantly tapping his phone and glancing at the screen.
‘Sorry,’ he said eventually. ‘Bec had to take Essie to the doctor’s. Bit of a fever, poor kid.’
He looked distraught, and Joe saw it quickly, Nash’s considerable love for this child and, by extension, this life. He’d never thought of his father as someone capable of such love. Nash had always seemed offhand, throwaway. Stuff happened but it wasn’t so important … career advancement? Natural, expected. House? Place to be. Friends? Cool to hang out, cool to leave.
The past?
A corresponding realisation: whatever had lain between Nash and his mother had never been smooth, or correct. She’d had her dream, but not told him. He’d not believed in the notion of dreams, and not told her.
Joe thought, maybe I need to see them separately because that’s what they are, what they’ve always been.
He drank most of his milkshake then told his father about Bel Canto, next Friday night.
‘Will you come?’
Nash’s nod was immediate. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Okay if I bring Bec?’
‘Of course,’ echoed Joe. Nash looked grateful. He checked his phone, raised his arm, ordered a Coke. Rapped out a text and said, ‘Thought any more about moving in?’
‘Don’t want to cramp your style,’ Joe told him.
‘Oh, you wouldn’t –’
‘Dad,’ said Joe, ‘I would. It’s okay, it’s better this way,’ and Nash murmured yes, it probably was … Thanks, Joe. You’re a good son, you know that? A good son.
He stood close to the centre of the nave and tried to see past the clerestory to the vault, but it was too dark, too far. The stone of the cathedral was more imposing than the God it represented. Those stained-glass figures seemed to be impossibly virtuous, their various sacrifices denoting a goodness that was beyond comprehension.
Lots to live up to, in any religion. Such worthiness was difficult, remarkable.
A significant crowd had gathered: men in dark suits, women in dresses, butterfly-bright. Joe could see the other performers coagulating before the main altar where a temporary stage had been erected. They all seemed to know each other. The gap between the stage and the chancel had been filled with seats and stands for the musicians.
Annie said, ‘Joe, I brought this. Will you wear it?’
The blue tie from Harrods. He smiled gratefully, raised his collar and looped the tie into a mess, re-looped, tried to remember.
‘Let me help.’
Familiar voice, Nash. He coiled and pulled the tie expertly, created a perfect knot.
‘Annie, good to see you.’
‘Hello, Nash.’ She allowed his peck on the cheek. ‘Thank you for coming.’
They stood as a small, compact group amid the maelstrom, Nash asking Joe about the judging criteria, Rebecca offering Essie to Annie for a grip-and-cuddle. The two women had a brief discussion on illnesses and remedies.
Family, thought Joe. As a word, it was becoming less and less sticky.
He said, ‘Hey, I should get ready.’
They wished him luck. Annie kissed and hugged him, didn’t seem to want to let go. ‘So proud,’ she whispered. ‘Your grandfather would be –’
She couldn’t finish. Joe didn’t mind. She didn’t have to finish. He knew what she meant: the necessity of sharing story, sharing song.
We know that we’re alive because we can feel it. The rub of clothing on skin. The pat of rain, kiss of sun. The gentle snip of sitting. Sore feet, a rising headache. Bit lip. Cold walls upon which to lean a hand, a cheek. The lure and warmth of another’s flesh. The gurgling, tumbling tumult of ideas and impressions, life’s waterfall.
But sometimes, he thought, we find ourselves beyond feeling. That word?
We transcend.
He’d sung and Soraya had sung. Their chords had risen through light and darkness to the apex of the vault where they’d floated and fluttered like a multitude of winged insects before falling softly, damply to earth. The audience had applauded, the judges had conferred, the announcer had spoken, the audience had applauded again and finally dispersed.
Outside, the night sky had deepened to a velvety purple. They’d gathered triumphantly on the footpath, his mother’s face creased, his father’s bewildered. It had taken some time before Joe, weary with the wonder of it all, had been able to bid farewell.
He lay now in his bed, lamp still on, gazing at without seeing a childhood poster of cows.
It would wait, he knew that. Be patient, he thought, because the rest of the story would wait. First, he had to better understand this new version of family. He also had to be kinder to Piers, know more of Soraya, be properly grateful to Ms Wicks.
Most of all … look to his own song and then, only then, when the music was clear and true and resonant, look to the songs of others.
The Sparrows Fly
Music by Michal Laks,
words by Rafael Ullmann
Look up, look up,
The sparrows fly,
One thousand birds
Across that blue sky.
One thousand throats
Filled with freedom’s cry,
Look up, look up,
The sparrows fly.
Look up, look up,
The sparrows fly,
One hundred birds
Across that red sky.
One hundred throats
Filled with capti
ve cry,
But look up, look up,
The sparrows still fly.
And all around …
The icy wind blows,
And all around …
The black of the crow,
And all around …
Cold stone, hot light,
And all around …
Down comes the night!
Look up, look up,
The sparrows fly,
Two tiny birds
Across that black sky.
Two tiny throats
Just you and I,
But look up, look up,
The sparrows will fly.
And all around …
The icy wind blows,
And all around …
The black of the crow,
And all around …
Cold stone, hot light,
And all around …
Down comes the night!
Look up, look up,
The sparrows fly,
One lonely bird
Across that white sky.
One tiny throat
Filled with one tiny cry –
But look up, look up,
That sparrow does fly.
Oh, look up, look up,
That sparrow does fly.
Oh, look up, look up,
Those sparrows will fly!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Yaxley lives in Brisbane where he writes stories for people of all ages. Richard won the 2010 Queensland Premier’s Literary Young Adult Fiction Award for Drink the Air and was short-listed in the 2014 West Australian Premier’s Awards for Joyous and Moonbeam. In 2015 he was awarded a May Gibbs Literature Trust Creative Time Fellowship which led to this novel, This Is My Song. See more at www.richardwyaxley.com
ABOUT THE BOOK
For some time, I had been wanting to write about the effects of traumatic events, such as those experienced in war-time, on those who experience these events and also on the generations that follow. Then my wife and I visited the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague. The Synagogue houses a collection of drawings done by the children of Theresienstadt ghetto under the tutelage of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (referenced as Marika’s teacher in my story). That these drawings survived the war is a tribute to the remarkable and courageous Dicker-Brandeis; she hid them in Theresienstadt inside two suitcases before she was deported to Auschwitz, where she died in 1944.