by Jessie Tu
I’m seated next to a woman who has been playing with the Philharmonic for eighteen years. Her skin is powdered white, her expression ageless. She wears a gold bracelet on her bow arm that slides up and down as she plays.
At lunch, I follow the other players into the dining hall. I learn that the flautist is from the UK and the cellist is from Germany. They have names that are easy to pronounce. Katie and Anne.
Katie stands to shake my hand.
‘Great accent,’ she says.
I’m not sure whether she means I have a good Australian accent, or that I have good English for someone with my face.
During rehearsals the next morning, one of them suggests going down to the Javits Center to see Hillary make her victory speech. Everyone agrees it will be a momentous occasion to be in the city. We make plans to meet after rehearsal. Everyone is glad it’s a Tuesday and there are no concerts. We can all be present to see the first female president make her mark in the city where dreams come true.
Later that night, the city transforms. Everything changes. The optimism has been replaced by something else. The televisions scattered; in bars and bodegas and cafes and libraries and restaurants; people are watching the nation light up in red patches. Each time I look at a screen, the country has turned increasingly red, like an infestation, a disease, chicken pox, a child’s body turning infectious. It’s terrifying, and I see it on the faces of the people around me.
On the subway, people are sobbing. A young couple are sitting side by side, the man holds a phone between them. The woman clutches a clump of tissues in her hand. It’s just quiet. It’s so quiet. Tuba looks at me on the street, wide-eyed. ‘This is incredible,’ he says. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s like the whole city is in mourning.’
We sit on a bench in the players’ room with Maestro and watch silently. A glass panel dividing the dining room and lounge room is behind the screen. At one point, I glance over at four, dead-faced figures, eyes unblinking, mouths slack, jaws dulled by a hollow reality. Then I recognise my own face among the reflected expressions. The width of my lips, expressionless, catches me by surprise. I look at myself, then back at the screen, then back at myself again. Then I glimpse another pair of eyes following my flickering attention. The beardless face of a young man, pale, full-lipped, small nose. Tuba smiles. I turn to see his face in colour.
‘What are you thinking about?’ he asks.
‘That maybe, if we go to bed now, we can wake up sooner and discover this was all a bad dream.’
41
That night, the sirens blare along Fifth Avenue.
I reach for my phone on the bedside table: 3.45 am.
App-man is asleep beside me, body curled in a foetal position, his body hidden under white sheets. I didn’t want him to stay, but the news of the election had frightened him and he asked if he could spend the night. I write a quick note on a post-it and stick it on my pillow.
GONE TO GYM. SEE YOURSELF OUT. TONIGHT, SAME TIME.
The city that never sleeps also never stops working out. I find an all-night gym and do a few laps in the pool.
The night-time is still opaque, magical. The city throbs, always in some unplaceable anxiety of want. There are other parts of the city that are livelier. Here, the locals keep to regular hours. The pool is empty when I arrive and empty when I leave. The cardio room is busier, people running or rowing off their anxiety. When I return to the apartment just before six, my bed is empty. On the note underneath my writing, a scribbled handwritten word. OK. So much affirmation and consolation contained in those two simple letters.
Over the next few days, I manage to make some friends among the musicians. I latch on to a couple from Denmark, both violinists who live nearby on a street with NYU housing.
On the Friday, three days after the election, I visit them at their place on Fourteenth Street. Outside, the skin of the city feels porous. At the entrance to their building, I press a button beside the front gate. A man opens the door. It’s the oboe player from the orchestra, and behind him is Tuba. He is taller than I remember, though the ends of his shoulders droop forward, as though pushed down by some invisible force. The Danish couple emerge from the hallway, take turns to shake my hand. They remind me of the flawless models on the pages of KINFOLK. Translucent white skin, salmon pink hair, ice blue eyes.
I follow them into their apartment and Tuba shuts the door behind us. The floor is littered with bread crusts and dead roaches.
‘Come in. Sorry, we haven’t cleaned up at all since we moved in,’ the woman says.
The city lights slice through the windows like faint holograms, cutting my vision into strips of film.
Tuba pulls out a stool for me at the kitchen bench.
‘Wine?’
‘Sure, thanks.’
I ask them how long they’ve played in the orchestra.
Oboe talks over Tuba. ‘It’s not nepotism, I swear,’ he says. ‘I mean, we’re not even from the same family.’ He means family of instruments in the orchestra.
Nobody laughs.
‘Yeah, I suppose there’s no fun in those kinds of jokes anymore.’
‘Maestro is the product of two musicians in the orchestra.’
‘Yeah, have you talked to his mother?’
I nod. ‘Just a few words. She seems nice.’
The Danish couple met at Juilliard fifteen years ago.
‘Juilliard was a better place back then,’ the man says. ‘It wasn’t as much about money as it is today. Sad how it’s changed, very sad.’
The five of us sit around a tiled bench, leaning over glasses of wine. I scratch the tip of my phone case to occupy my hands.
‘Can we go someplace to forget about the state of the world?’ Tuba says. ‘I don’t want to talk about politics.’
‘We weren’t talking about politics,’ Oboe says. ‘Plus, what we do is inherently political.’
Oboe smooths out his hair looking in a mirror hanging on the wall.
‘Play music?’ Tuba replies.
‘Yeah.’
‘You said it. I didn’t.’
‘Where are we going tonight?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know. Oboe suggested the Met,’ Tuba says.
‘No way. I’d feel like a kid on a school excursion.’
We spend half an hour debating what to do. A bar, a venue, a cinema. Anything that does not involve music. In the end, we decide on the Whitney because it is within walking distance—and because it is free tonight and because it is cold, and we don’t want to catch the subway, where everyone is still crying.
On the street, I walk alongside Oboe, who is Jewish. He has an impish-looking mouth. It pairs strangely with his long locks which he ties into a low ponytail. He asks if I am a minority back in Australia and I tell him I’m not sure, it depends on how I’m feeling.
‘How do you feel now?’ he asks.
‘I feel Australian.’
‘Is that good?’
‘I don’t know.’
Tuba is from Austin, Texas. He was born in Yonkers but spent most of his youth travelling between Texas and New York, where his parents still teach at Sarah Lawrence College. For the past three years, he’s been living in Cleveland where he graduated from the Institute of Music. He has a fantastically sharp accent. ‘This is the only city in the world that will give you everything you want,’ he says while we’re waiting at a crossing, our bodies wedged against a group of European exchange students with matching backpacks and Beats slung around their necks. Tuba asks me if it’s my first time in the city.
‘No.’
He smiles knowingly. ‘You’re a hunter, I can tell.’
He looms over me like a bent tower. He is a bit older, mid-twenties, military-cut hair, inoffensive mouth, grey eyes.
‘A hunter?’ I say.
He nods. ‘Absolutely. This city feeds the unsatisfied soul. The constant wanderer. The rumbling heart.’
‘Are you a poet?’
He chuckles. A
full-throated exhalation of excitable air.
‘There are two types of people in the world,’ he says, looking down at me. ‘There are those who are birds and those who are trees. You’re a bird. New York’s full of birds. Every one of us migrated here. This place gives you somewhere safe to explode.’
Banks had said that, too.
‘Who are you?’ I ask.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Are you even a musician? Have you got a chapbook so I can read your poems?’
‘Not yet. But watch this space.’
My temples throb with something red, anticipatory.
Inside the museum, we leave our jackets at the coat check counter. In the gallery lobby, a wall phone is stuck onto exposed pipes; red words engraved onto white panels. Tuba walks to one and picks up the phone. I watch as he communicates with his eyes what he is hearing. I focus on the smooth coil of copper of the telephone, hanging like a severed arm. A white American artist who calls herself MPA is preparing for a performance inside an enclosed space. There are photographic collages in various shades of red. We visit the enclosed space on the third floor where in February, the artist, with two other female artists, will cage themselves in a narrow space between windowpanes overlooking the Hudson. The light is red. Everything is red.
On the streets, there are people standing and smoking outside bars and restaurants. Everyone is talking in groups, animal clans.
We find a Turkish takeout and order falafel rolls, sitting at a table inside, eating them while talking about Edward Hopper and his famous painting, Nighthawks. There were too many people at the museum. The crowds swelled towards the end and we had a few seconds to glance at it. Oboe says Hopper was a genius. Tuba says he was a cunt who abused his wife. ‘All geniuses are abusive towards women,’ he says. ‘It’s a prerequisite.’
‘That’s a terrible thing to say,’ Oboe says. ‘You don’t really believe that?’
Tuba looks at me.
‘Well, maybe there’s some truth to that,’ I say slowly. ‘I mean, if I were a powerful man, I’d probably abuse my wife too. And other women.’
For two mornings, I sit a metre away from Itzhak Perlman as he rehearses the program for a one-night-only concert. He runs through the Beethoven Romances for Violin at a faster tempo than usual and speaks slowly to the orchestra. When he smiles, one end of his mouth dips in a sly grin and the gap between his front teeth gives him a boyish charm, though he is now in his seventies, with a clump of ocean-foam white hair. I’d not played the Romances myself for years, but hearing him play them reminds me of the colour blue; how I reached for its cradling tenor, all those years ago. For the Brahms 4th, he is gentle with the tempo, gentle with his interpretation. He relaxes into the beat; he trusts us. I feel like we are giant kelp, waving under his direction. That evening, at the end of the concert, as he twists his wheelchair around to a standing ovation, Frank, the concertmaster, bends to shake his hand, and Perlman reaches back and clasps my hand too. For a moment, I feel part of history.
A week later, another violinist flies into the city to perform the Beethoven Violin Concerto. A Danish man with terrifyingly large hands engrosses everyone with the ease with which he plays the opening double stops, and the flair he threads through the rest of the concerto. I know the orchestra part by heart, so I spend the entire piece staring at the violinist’s face; his slack jaw clamped firmly on his chin rest, cheeks jostling about; later in the players’ lounge, he tells me he’d always thought that was the hardest piece. I stare at his mouth; his bottom lip protruding out slightly, like a little boy with an uncontrollable lisp.
During interval, I pace around the players’ lounge, stretching my arms, massaging my wrists. Tuba is slouched beside me checking his phone. He asks me what it’s like not to be in the spotlight. We’re chugging water from plastic bottles. He looks vacantly at his phone. I tell him it’s not as exciting, but I’m on the edge of the stage so I’ve still got the spotlight on the side of my face. It feels like being on the edge of a cliff and wanting to jump off. The lights cast shadows on my face. I miss the attention, the guarantee that all eyes will be on me. I want to be reminded of who I can be.
A bell chimes to signal the second half of the concert.
He bends down to clutch his gold instrument. ‘You want to hang out some time?’
I smile, too eager.
42
We walk to rehearsals the following morning, the sound of a crowd chanting in unison rising across Columbus Circle. Something about Syria. The war. Invasion. The US army.
Tuba lifts his head taller and whispers the chant.
‘Are there protests here every day?’ I ask.
‘Yeah, pretty much.’
‘What a city.’
‘What a nuisance.’
On Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, we have rehearsals for most of the day. Concerts are usually Thursdays till Saturdays, sometimes Wednesday night. At the end of the year, big drawcards bring in the crowds; Mozart, Beethoven and Dvorak. Stock-standard repertoire.
Each weeknight is filled with a concert or social gathering. The tempo of the city catches in my chest. Every face I pass looks affable. The hunched bodies race by in black puffer jackets, eyes permanently narrowed against the icy air. Soon, the snow will start falling. I track the motions of the city with my pulse, counting the number of times my heart leaps at the sight of something so gloriously New York. The yellow cabs, pretzel stands, water towers dotting the skyline. The familiar streets and avenues. Fourth. Fifth. Sixth.
Before long, the idea of returning to Sydney feels regressive. A quiet form of self-entrapment. I say as much to Tuba as we’re walking to a local bar after a concert two weeks out from Christmas. New York City is constantly changing, but it’s also always the same.
‘This fucking city,’ he says, glaring at a passing yellow cab.
‘What, you don’t like it?’
He keeps walking, slightly ahead now. I trail half a metre behind.
At the Carnegie Club, we find two empty stools and sit side on to a framed picture of Winston Churchill, who has a cigar trapped between his lips. The amber light from the lamps gives the space a romantic, nineteenth-century air. Everyone looks beautiful under these lights.
Tuba raises a hand and a waiter walks towards us. ‘Would you like to hear our whisky specials for tonight?’ she asks.
I nod eagerly. ‘Please.’
‘We’ve just received a new batch from Japan. Single malt. Very, very dry.’
Tuba rubs his palms together. ‘Yes, yes.’
‘Two of those?’
The woman whips around and disappears into a crowd of old men in suits.
Everything is leather, red, velvet, dark.
‘Cigar?’ Tuba taps the glass ashtray in front of us.
‘No thanks, I think I’ll consume it by osmosis just sitting here.’
‘People come here to pretend it’s 1955 again.’
‘Pre-Bloomberg and all that?’
‘Pre-feminism.’
‘That’s fucked up.’
‘Precisely.’
‘Is that why you brought me here? To molest me and get away with it?’
He laughs, open mouth. I can see his tonsils. ‘Don’t flatter yourself.’
While I’m in the bathroom, warm pee gushing, my phone vibrates in my bag. I scuttle off the seat, tear a piece of toilet paper off, clench it between my legs. The name on the screen startles me.
I swipe quickly.
‘Hi.’
‘Jena.’
It’s the first time he’s said my name aloud. Mark is calling from work; his voice is so clear I tell him it’s like he is right in front of me.
‘I miss you,’ he says. I wonder if he is high or drunk. He makes other small talk. His new team. The weather. Always the weather. After a while, I realise that I’m still crouching in an awkward position, toilet paper between my legs.
‘I need to go.’
‘Wait, just te
ll me when you’re back.’
‘March.’
‘You will come back, right?’
In the mirror afterwards, I stare at my reflection. He must love me. Why else would he call? Was this what I’d wanted all along? I run my hands under warm water, dry them on a paper towel. At the bar, Tuba is waiting for me with a glass of whisky, grinning.
43
The smell of pot snakes into my apartment on Fifth and Twelfth. It’s everywhere I go, in the subway, on the streets, entering a building, coming out of a building. The city is in a constant state of re-wilding. On Sunday morning, Tuba and I go to Chelsea Markets for breakfast. He’s never been because he tells me he’d rather die than be mistaken for a tourist. The previous evening, I met Nigel Westlake for the first time, and we reminisced about Australia. He conducts the score to Babe while the movie plays behind us on the big screen. It’s a welcome relief after a week-long marathon of Handel’s Messiah.
Tuba and I meet at Clement Clarke Moore Park and walk the High Line towards the markets. The morning is slow, air still adjusting to the day’s fresh chill, a sharp brush on my cheeks. I put on sunglasses because the glare is blinding. The buildings look as though they’re illuminated by fluorescent lights from the inside.
We find a table outside a matcha cafe. Last time I drank matcha was with Mark at the Korean cafe, so many nights ago. In another life. In that life, I was learning how to be a better victim of choking, and playing the role well.
I adopt an American accent when the man taking my order asks me to repeat myself. I order a green tea latte and Tuba gets a scoop of green tea ice cream.
‘Ice cream for breakfast?’
We buy fish tacos and share a bowl of pesto hummus and fried eggplant. I ask for extra coriander and the man at the counter looks at me like I’m from Mars.