Augustino and the Choir of Destruction (2 page)

en masse
to our own devastation, these dark thoughts were not Mère's but Olivier's, whose articles she had read in the island newspaper, and what exactly was it we wanted for ourselves, surrender or death? Yes, of course I'll dance tonight, Chuan said, her smile a twin to her son's, and it distresses me that my husband shares such sad thoughts with his readers since he has retired here, but there's nothing I can do to change that, so Chuan was going to dance once more and Mère was going to enjoy her solitude with the operas of Puccini, though Mélanie her daughter kept suggesting she get to know the symphonies of César Franck or the operas of Benjamin Britten, and why did Mélanie want every classical rule broken and monumental works filled with metallic sounds and songs of unbearable sorrow in which the human voice was distorted and sometimes silenced, to which absentee gods were these cathedrals, these fortresses of modern sound erected, and these lamentations of the poet Owen contained in Britten's
War Requiem
, to what dove of peace lost forever? The Requiem, that Franz (ageing rebel conductor that he was) refused to perform in churches, but only out in the open and under the sun, on terraces and in pavilions by the sea, could be heard in Daniel and Mélanie's house and across the island, the choir's
libera me
wafting to the heavens and toward who-knows-what abysses and resurrections, and Mère thought if only they could just leave me alone, just as Marie Curie said at the end of her life, Puccini would always be a spellbinder to her; Chuan was gone now, running off in her bright red dress and black leather sandals to the vast kitchen she had painted carmine, saying the Cuban architecture of the house demanded these tints of burning sunlight on her walls, and her husband had gone to greet a young man from the caterer's with an immaculate white singlet and pants under a black apron at the entrance to the garden who was telling Olivier that his wife had ordered the tray of fish he held in his hands, but our table's already groaning complained Olivier, look, put that down, it's too heavy for you, what's your name son, it's Lazaro, he often comes here said Chuan sidling up to him as Lazaro gazed impenetrably at Jermaine over Olivier's head and his wife's as he held it, and Jermaine was laughing with his friends, well-off children all of them, drinking and laughing around the pool, the green water iris-like in the daytime, playing wild reflections across their faces, all of them with the same bleach-blonde hair Jermaine had, the same necklaces, in their festive circle they were no more disparate, no less outlandish, thought Lazaro, than Jermaine's parents, the father a moody African-American, a giant in this house next to his delicate oriental wife whose smile might have been rebellious or kind — it wasn't clear — these people were so self-assured living here on life's margins, far from the troublesome struggle for survival Lazaro had to wage, whether it meant taking to the sea with rough men or working for a caterer or as a waiter in a restaurant, nothing hemmed them in or confined them, Lazaro thought with clenched teeth; to Chuan he said, as she looked astonished at him, look at these kids, they have to drink to have fun, when you could do it just drinking tea or fruit juice, alcohol is forbidden in my religion, it's poison; Olivier got annoyed and said we don't talk about religion around here, religion will destroy the world, and who was this sectarian young man that his wife treated like a son, out of kindness of course, Olivier thought, to bridge the class divide, for we are all equal, all equally unhappy, some wearing masks to cover faces streaked with blood from mutilation and slavery, Chuan had been born into it in Japan where for a long time it would have been better not to be born at all and simply wait a long time for the embers to cool just a little, as far as Olivier was concerned, one of the few black senators elected, had he actually put an end to segregation, if only Jermaine loved him genuinely, that would be his true happiness, Jermaine coming into his office in the morning and saying, Dad, you know I love you, I say it often, sidetracked from life, that's what they are, thought Lazaro, all of them, with their alcohol and seafood banquets, so Jermaine and his friends might as well have fun while they can, said Chuan, because university vacation days would soon be over, and then we won't see the kids for months, besides what do they know about the other side of town, Lazaro thought, Lazaro's zone, Carlos, the gang-fights on Bahama and Esmerelda, suddenly Lazaro had a flash of rapists being executed in Tehran, a vision which could only emerge from past shame, perhaps he'd been present at public executions with his mother and she had said, cover your eyes, let's get out of here, don't open them, was he one of the ten thousand people of Tehran one cursed dawn, numbed into compulsive stupefaction and fascination, like all the rest, as they saw five condemned twenty-five-year-olds hanged from a crane for rape and racketeering . . . a long, agonizing time dying at the end of a rope hoisted from the back of a truck, the crowd chanting in unison, good, that's what they deserve, so thought the families of their victims in amongst the crowd, not a voice raised in pity, and the dawn called forth a misty day, a pink dawn already dipped in rain, five black vultures as they called themselves, the black vulture gang, hanged from the backs of truck-mounted cranes, a journalist counting the five to six minutes of their death-throes and jotting it down in his notebook, at Lavizan, Lavizan Square, rapists, of course, but what if they were falsely accused, not really rapists, conning and robbing young women in parks, what if it was a plot by women, for it was they who had called for their public hanging, after all, these women had all been seen later on in Lavizan Square with their children at the dawn executions, men, women and children, everyone a hungry spectator, some perched on fences or electricity poles, a vendor of dry cakes weaving through the crowd, and if this wasn't a conspiracy, thought Lazaro, then these five black vultures had been hanged for no reason, hadn't they? Yet it was a man who carried out the contemptible ritual, slipping the knot over their heads, and two of them had murmured their innocence at the last second, and a third had asked for forgiveness, another who resembled Lazaro had held out, and before the bodies were lifted skyward, held himself upright, hands and neck bound, contemplating the early dawn and reddened mists, defiant, plump lips barely moving in an impassive face, this is how Lazaro would have done it, he thought, thinking they were hanging him by mistake, it was a conspiracy; what's wrong, Olivier asked Lazaro, let us give you a strawberry drink before you go off on that motorcycle again, but Lazaro was suddenly heading off toward Atlantic Boulevard, walking rapidly, his black apron flapping in the wind, that boy gives me a strange feeling, Olivier told Chuan, you're the one who's always too serious, so don't blame me tomorrow if that loud music of Jermaine's makes me deaf, said Olivier impatiently, I just love it, said Chuan, loud and screaming, said Olivier, Mélanie says Benjamin Britten's music illustrates the anxiety of our time, thought Mère, that fugue with such stunning energy like the hammering boots of young soldiers marching impetuously, joyfully to battle, that old European youth and its longing for battle . . . isn't it still true, that's what scares me about this music, Mère thought, it would be better if it were just soft and melodious without the sound of cannons to the beat of the young soldiers' march, but rather the early spring-song, the cooing of doves, white pigeons of love's time, letting us feel the joy of their coupling, so hasty to unite these pigeons or doves that they bump into one another's bluish breasts in flight, perhaps Mère might have said, like Mélanie, that Britten's
War Requiem
was really the opposite — a solemn mass for peace — so exclaims the choir, “Lord, grant them eternal rest, and let the perpetual light shine upon them,” but alas, what rest can Britten's work bring to those already dead, laid to rest beneath their arms, surrounded by officiants holding candles and praying for them, better the music should be solely melodic and soft, like the protracted song of mourning-doves or the cosmic chant of Olivier Messiaen, composer and ornithologist, in nuanced notes of birdsong, hearing the birds stirring at morning makes one think the world is reborn, it was he who wrote
Réveil des oiseaux
for piano and orchestra, thought Mère, he felt for a moment, didn't he, that he had created a garden of wonders, the original paradise complete with all its beasts and trees, the birthplace of music, the initial song of birds still coming to us in distant crystalline echoes, as though spilling forth from a tunnel and through our assimilated rhythms and sounds as musicians use them, surprizing and multifarious, from brass to Martenot waves in works with bird-whistles and chirps of nestlings, thus for a moment the composer had re-created the world, decomposed it like Britten's requiem, showing us who we really were, incapable of change, the same annoying portrait of ourselves, violent and warring; in his physical adoration of nature, Messiaen was saying, listen to this redemptive song, spilling out so pure from the tunnel of darkness, a pious music of belief, borne away by faith, something Mère could not understand, better if it were not so, just this magnificently gifted composer, lyricism a mere short breath of beauty, but that was not belief nor what he felt of our way through life, the composer dared to weave, insistently sometimes, into this birdsong awakening amid the rustle of leaves, this whistling outburst of joy, the idea that there was a beyond, there were cities, colours, a divine kingdom somewhere, in his harmonic prophecies he went so far as to describe colours, dawns which could only exist in heavenly cities, and where were these cities without crime or meanness, by what marvel could a musician still be able to dream of these mere decades ago in a death-camp at Terezin, where a choir of emaciated men and women sang another requiem by Verdi or Mozart before their executioner music-lovers, a requiem for their own interment, music with which they would be buried alive, the men and women of this choir, voices suddenly suspended, cut out, sliced off, on what birdlike migrations would these requiem voices and notes wend their way back to the city free of peril evoked by the musician? Mère was right to like Puccini best, a musician of feeling who understood women so well, and the Britten requiem conducted by Franz could be heard everywhere on the island, through the rumble of ocean and lower, quite audibly, the muffled, filtered carnage on TV, this was no longer a place of rest for Franz between his European tours with his wife and children, lingering in sleazy bars late into the night, it was now late, he thought, and you would think they had heard the anger spread through Britten's
War Requiem
, yesterday he had taken refuge in a house rented from a mistress, now today he was alone, wandering from one rooming-house to another along the ocean-front, once you could sail off to Cuba and be even more isolated, no one looking for you, no phone, no mail out there, he'd write his sonata for clarinet and piano, just back from a concert-tour of Vienna, London and Mexico City, he'd be straight off again, Franz was unstable, a wild sort, Mère thought, a man with everything who wants still more, he piled up knowledge as well as doubt, love and disappointment, and where was the procession that preceded him in triumph yesterday when he arrived on the island with his wife, children and sister Lilia — herself a musician — with friends, assistants, a maid or two . . . an unending feverish round of solid friendships and chance acquaintances sent him ranging round the beaches meeting fake artists and pushers who robbed him, all in the same day he played tennis with illustrious poet-friends, dined in splendid restaurants opening onto the sea, and what laughs and tipsiness tinged the air on those nights, even though Franz always held onto a side of himself that remained obscure to those who knew him, some irrepressible force whose strength was unknown to him, he would put his wife and children to bed with the vision in his head of the stranger he absolutely had to embrace tonight, the face was Renata's, or perhaps, later on, another woman's, for those who knew him, thought Mère, a whiff of scandal always clung to Franz, how could someone compose a sonata, often even an entire commissioned opera, and still get stiff drunk with whiskey in sailors' bars where he would recite Milton and Blake, poets he knew by heart:
Songs of Experience
,
Paradise Lost
, his anarchic thoughts overriding memory, as though his long hands (also capable of memory) rested on the piano keys, a man whose spirit and senses certainly bathed in the darkest waters, thought Mère, but now he was bereft and alone, alone to guide himself when not at the helm of his orchestra, dropping anchor alone on his barque, incipient songs lingering always on his lips, the first act of an opera he knew by heart, voices, a song to which, crying, he had rocked his first grandson many years later . . . oh, he'd see them all once more, but now it was time, time for Britten's
War Requiem
, and for dreaming of all, all those women and children, all those songs and fruits of experience, his paradise lost, limitless, his happiness and his sentence, it was time to silence for them the too-intimate music hidden beneath the immense
War Requiem
, just as life ebbed away tomorrow, who knows by what means, a heart attack or something more insidious, he, Franz, born to music, must spread his great arms over those he loved and protect them from that formidable and ineluctable choir, for the warriors had breached the room where Lilia, his musician sister, held his sleeping grandson in her arms, Britten's requiem had to be heard, voices unfurling like waves on the sea, Mère thought she heard the trace of song languishing on Franz's lips, do not come in here, let our children sleep, while Franz glided solo towards port, where his too-active imagination, although untroubled, free of Franz's dark shadows, was still as aware as he was where he would be in ten years, perhaps like Mère he would be afflicted with a disturbing tremor of the right hand, Mélanie had noticed this anomaly but said nothing, always on the lookout for her mother, she was suddenly cautious, stepping ahead of her mother into that night, sensing the same premonitions in the symptom sketched in air by a trembling right hand, Mélanie told her mother you must not overdo it and tire yourself out like that, Augustino can carry packages for you while he's at home, do the gardening, her gardening, even that they would take away from her, her roses, banks of acacia, already they were pressuring her into renunciation and Mère recalled that dream, more than a sign it was, but still prescient, and in it Mère held out a glass of wine to Mélanie, which split in two before Mélanie could ever grasp it, Mère's fingers, her right hand, bled onto the crystal, and she awoke with a sharp pain as though in the breakage her daughter Mélanie had been snatched from her, so it was true that the day would come when she no longer saw Mélanie, the jewel of her life would be gone, although they were so different — the maternal instinct Mère did not have but Mélanie did, Mai was only six but a difficult child, often worrying her mother by disappearing, would she one day disappear forever like the little girl whose name she bore, and Mélanie would have a lot to worry about with this much-desired child, a daughter, Esther, my mother, I will have a daughter, the glass was beyond repair, the augury irrevocable in that trembling right hand, the fabric of life folding into the gap of mourning, one must simply wait and not flee, hands cut by the glass, and Mère's fingers hurt only remotely as in a dream, there Mélanie was beside Daniel in Chuan's flowered courtyard, and Mère dared not look at her for fear of loving her too much, all they could talk about was how well Samuel was doing in New York in Arnie Graal, his teacher's, latest choreography, it was wrong that Mère felt more love for her daughter than for the others, even Samuel and Augustino whom she adored, but Mère could not touch the heart of all these young beings anymore, it was a world she couldn't reach anymore, thinking of Mai was as dizzying as any moonscape, who knows what it was filled with, all the perils life held piling up around that little head which bowed to no one, while Mélanie would rather have a sweet, cuddly child, all-seeing Mélanie had noticed the trembling right hand but said nothing, she had felt the glass slivering away, my fingers gushing blood on the edges, thought Mère the way she would like to have said to Mélanie, my thoughts pouring out to you, perhaps also a flood of thankful tears at having borne you, Mère did not say these words out loud, all they discussed was Samuel's success in New York, and in still another dream, perhaps in ancient temples or in a Scottish castle, the dimensions of the place were overwhelming, one could see the rows of mortuary rooms, dressed all in furs, Mère approached one of them, removing her furs and jewels as she went, and knowing fearfully all the while that she was never leaving this place, temples, morbid nests, Mère was walled up, in another dream, she and Augustino were out looking for Mai and got lost themselves off the polar shores, what were they doing so far away calling Mai and getting no answer, Mai where are you cried Augustino, it was the day Jean-Mathieu's ashes were scattered off The-Island-Nobody-Owns, when Mai had disappeared just after being photographed by Caroline, they called out to her all along the oceanfront, and she never answered, turning up only in the evening under some Australian pines, and in this dream, she continued to refuse to answer, Mère and Augustino had swum in freezing waters beneath packs of ice all the way to an iceberg, and there Augustino saw a bureau with Mai inside it, but we have no key to open it, he said, then suddenly they heard a voice begging them, Grandma, Augustino, I'm here, let me out, and Mère awoke from the weight of these dreams thinking she would no longer be there to help Mai grow up when Mélanie was in Washington, the nanny Marie-Sylvie really only felt overwhelming affection for Vincent, and Daniel had already been forced to forbid her to take him to the seaside, even on windless days, she might be responsible for more of his repeated episodes, Samuel's boat