My Heart Laid Bare Part 32

Of course Abraham Licht bitterly envied Warren Harding. He felt the crude injustice of Fate, that he should be but an anonymous federal employee, under the capricious thumb of Harry Daugherty, while a b.u.mptious fool like Harding was President of the United States! Daugherty was said to have groomed Harding for public office and to have worked over the years to a.s.sure his nomination, solely on the basis of Harding's appearance; the irony being, that Abraham Licht was every bit as attractive-as n.o.ble, as stately, as "sincere," as Presidential. Why had he thrown away his political prospects, as a greenling youth! Was he himself to blame? It didn't bear thinking about, Abraham Licht counseled himself; that way lay madness.

When he first rose to national prominence Harding was a stately-appearing, silver-haired, rather ordinarily handsome man in his mid-fifties, with a strong profile, prominent brows, and a winning smile. His heroes were Caesar, Hamilton, and Napoleon, so far as he knew of them; he carried himself with an air of purposeful dignity, as, perhaps, they had done in their times. (Was the Harding line tainted by Negro blood, as vicious, unproved rumors would have it, originating in his hometown?-those who wished to vilify Harding claimed to see "Negroid features" in his face; others professed themselves incapable of seeing any such thing.) Harding had been for years the editor of a small Ohio newspaper and his sense of the world's complexity derived from that experience: what was significant might be presented in a column or two of type; what could not be fitted into that s.p.a.ce could not be significant. Once in the White House he had neither the time nor the concentration to read newspapers carefully, and of course he never read books; even an interview with a "specialist" (in taxation problems, in European affairs, for instance) wearied him. He was too small for the office of President, he smilingly complained to his friends, who waved aside his remarks impatiently: for, after all, were not they prepared to help? Apart from poker, golf, infrequent trysts with Nan, and drinking with his companions, nothing so delighted Harding as addressing crowds in large, open, public places; and afterward mingling with the people and shaking hands. If only the Presidency could always be thus-!

With his sharp eye for imperfection Abraham Licht noted early on a certain unmistakable air of doom about the President: dapper, and congenial, and resigned: but doom nonetheless. Perhaps Harding sensed that his friends were betraying him on all sides; that he wouldn't live out his term of office; and that, following his death, every aspect of his Presidency would be contemned. (Even Nan, dear sweet silly Nan, would boast to the world of their liaison, selling their "true love story" to the press!) At times it seemed to Abraham Licht that Harding must know of the corruption practiced by his friends, and was giving his tacit consent; at other times it seemed clear that the poor fool knew nothing, and wished to know nothing.

"Shall I be the one to tell him?" Abraham mused. But then, sighing, "Ah, but why!"

YET HARDING WAS deteriorating rapidly, and with so queer, stoic and wistful an air, Abraham Licht came to pity him.

The President's weakness for bootleg whiskey, wienerwurst and batter-fried chicken took its toll; by degrees he grew bloated. His fleshy jowls puffed out even as his eyes retreated beneath the heavy patrician brows. His voice, once blandly well modulated, now quavered when he stood before the most innocuous of well-wishers; microphones unnerved him. He sweated in public. His luck, of which he'd once innocently boasted, now deserted him at both poker and golf; if he won bets, they were frantic off-the-cuff wagers for a pittance, or items of jewelry. (Though one memorable evening he infuriated the d.u.c.h.ess by gambling away an entire set of exquisite Wedgwood White House china which, as the d.u.c.h.ess charged, was not his to barter.) To his male companions he joked crudely-yet wistfully-of having a "monkey-gland" operation to restore his virility. Though beginning to be criticized by sharp-eyed foes of tobacco, largely female, Harding chewed his Piper Heidsieck tobacco compulsively, hacking and spitting in a way some observers found offensive. Yet, Harding pleaded, he required chewing for his health: he simply couldn't get through a morning without it!

It became an affectionate anecdote among the President's circle how poor Harding infuriated the d.u.c.h.ess by sneaking several plugs of Piper Heidsieck into his mouth while sitting on the dais at the Princeton University commencement ceremony of 1922, where with great pomp, drenched with sweat in his woollen cap and gown, he was awarded something called an "honorary doctorate"-indeed an honor for a man of Harding's modest educational background and yet more modest intellectual ambition.

Like all Presidents, despite his innocent good nature Warren Harding drew threats against his life, whether by those seriously intending to do him harm or by mere crackpots (of whom the nation's capital enjoyed a good many in the twenties). So Secret Service men accompanied the President everywhere, as in a children's game, even to his hotel trysts with Nan (where, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of those in the know, they waited discreetly in the corridor outside the room) and to the Gayety Burlesque on lower Pennsylvania Avenue (where the President was privileged to sit in a special box screened from view of the lowlife audience). By degrees he found no relaxation and virtually no happiness anywhere except in the groggy uproarious midst of his circle of friends-who, perhaps, were not truly his friends.

One evening at the Little House on H Street, to which Abraham Licht had come after midnight in formal evening attire and tall silk hat (having attended a performance of the The Flying Dutchman, which magnificent tragic music never failed to excite him), Harding chanced to remark to Abraham, in a wistful tone, that when he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at Princeton it was said of him he "stood in the tradition of Lincoln"; but somehow, he didn't quite believe it, himself.

At this, Abraham professed to be puzzled; and said, with a gracious smile that if at Princeton they told him he was in the tradition of Lincoln, and one of the nation's greatest leaders, then certainly he must be-"For who would know better than the administrators at Princeton?"

Harding leaned over to spit a silver-dollar-sized clot of tobacco juice into the br.i.m.m.i.n.g bra.s.s spittoon at his feet. Weakly he said, "Yes. I suppose so." Again he paused, to chew and spit. He turned to Abraham Licht as to a newfound friend and said, with a sudden frank smile, that he'd come a long distance from Blooming Grove, Ohio, and would be returned in one way only. "And do you know what that way must be, Mr. Hine?"

Abraham Licht felt a stab of recognition. He is a form of myself only not schooled in The Game. Knowing like a fated animal that his doom is upon him. Though afterward Abraham would regret not having spoken to Warren Harding in equally frank, brotherly tones, at the time, in the clamor of the poker setting, he could only stroke his goateed chin and look perplexed and reply emphatically, "Why, Mr. President, I certainly do not."

ONE OF THE very few controversial acts of Harding's term of office was the pardoning, in his second year, of a number of political prisoners whom Woodrow Wilson had charged with wartime sedition.

There were twenty-three remaining alive in federal penitentiaries by this time; all men; among them the notorious Socialist Eugene Debs and the yet more notorious Negro "revolutionary" Prince Elihu of the World Negro Betterment & Liberation Union.

Which of these "enemies of America" was the more dangerous had long been an issue in the conservative press. President Harding, to the astonishment of all his staff, decided that neither was an enemy, and must be freed at once.

No one was more furious than the d.u.c.h.ess. "Not only a traitorous Red but a traitorous black!-Warren, I put my foot down; I will not allow it." Unspoken between them was the old, slanderous charge that Harding had "Negroid" ancestry; his opponents would take up the cause again, more cruelly than ever.

Harding yet held his ground. Saying, to the press, that he could not comprehend his predecessor's hatred for "political" foes-the United States, after all, under its sacred Const.i.tution and with its special connection to the Omnipotent, is the only place in the world where freedom is guaranteed.

"I will pardon them because it is the right thing to do. That is the only reason to do any thing, I think," Harding said tersely.

When Debs and Elihu were brought by special car to the White House to be photographed in the Oval Office with the President, Abraham Licht made certain he was among the small gathering of witnesses; and felt quite moved by the sight of the legendary Debs-tall and gaunt, with the look of a man uncertain of his surroundings; and Prince Elihu-who did indeed look princely though he was wearing not one of his flamboyant caftans but an ordinary brown gabardine suit, and his hair, formerly wild and woolly, was trimmed close to his head.

(Abraham felt a stab in his heart. For a weak moment, he worried he might faint. How greatly changed his 'Lisha! His Little Moses!) (But clearly this man was Little Moses, grown up, a being not even Abraham Licht with his prescient powers could have imagined.) As Prince Elihu, the sole Negro in a crowd of Caucasians, he stood in a pose virtually sculpted, knowing himself on display, and, even in his belligerence, basking in such attention. His arm and shoulder muscles, Abraham saw, had grown hard; his torso was nearly as well formed as Harwood's had been, though Elihu possessed a grace his crude stepbrother had never had. His nose was broader than Abraham recalled, yet his mouth, corners tucked downward, appeared thinner; his gaze was shrewd, watchful, restless; his hair touched lightly with gray. Prince Elihu's age was a matter of conjecture in the press, ranging from thirty to above forty years, but Abraham knew the young man was but thirty-three-yet, one had to admit, so very changed! Mature, and transmogrified.

As President Harding stumblingly read off a prepared speech honoring the occasion, and reaffirming the sacred rights of Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, and Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, Prince Elihu alone seemed scarcely to be listening. His hooded gaze darted restlessly about the room; skimming the unfamiliar white faces; lingering nowhere . . . not even upon Abraham Licht, whom, as Gordon Jasper Hine, Special Employee of the Justice Department, it would have required extraordinary powers to recognize: with his graying chestnut-red hair, neatly trimmed goatee and thick-lensed pince-nez firm upon his nose.

Yet I might have winked at him. Made a gesture if only a gesture of pain.

Eager to finish the ceremony so that he could retire upstairs and get free of his tight clothes, and pour himself a needed drink (the White House during Prohibition was provided with only the finest Canadian whiskey, through the altruistic effort of Jess Smith), Harding smiled awkwardly at the "political prisoners" before him, and took no notice of the insult, if insult was intended, of Prince Elihu's aloof manner. With an air of nervous jocosity, as the ceremony concluded, Harding remarked that he was certain that President Wilson in his ill health and anxiety about the War had possibly misunderstood their intentions-"You had not meant, after all, to commit the actual act of sedition." To this, Eugene Debs smiled and seemed to agree; but Prince Elihu said, in an arrogant voice lowered so that only a few persons might overhear, "I doubt Mr. Wilson was such a fool, Mr. President."

Warren Harding died suddenly on the evening of 2 August 1923, in San Francisco, following an exhausting and ill-advised "Voyage of Understanding" (speechmaking through the West and Alaska); but by that time, when the house of cards was at last tumbling down, Abraham Licht had been gone from Was.h.i.+ngton for several months. With bank drafts for considerable sums of money, and small valuable items (the diamond stickpins, for instance) in his suitcases, he checked into the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan; consulted with Dr. Lespina.s.se; underwent the mysterious "rejuvenative gland transplant" operation (which was always to remain mysterious, as Dr. Lespina.s.se never divulged, even to the medical profession, the secret of his technique) in Mount Sinai Hospital; and afterward recovered from the mild trauma of the experience in the resort town of White Sulphur Springs in the Catskill Mountains . . . where, by chance, even as he was casting about for a fresh business venture, he learned of Dr. Felix Bies and Autogenic Self-Mastery and the Parris Clinic.

"There it is! Just the thing!"

He had always intended to try his hand at medicine: at healing.

ALSO, ABRAHAM COULDN'T shake off a feeling of having been contaminated by his many months in Was.h.i.+ngton, amid that carnival recklessness, and things-spinning-out-of-control; and daily contact with such crude persons as Harry Daugherty, Jess Smith and Gaston Bullock Means.

In the end, in fact, Abraham had become frightened of his partner, who brandished his pistol too freely, and boasted, when drunk, or high on cocaine, of his ingenious plan to make a million dollars in a single deal (by quas.h.i.+ng an indictment pending against U.S. Steel, perhaps); and to take Jess Smith's favored position with the administration.

"But how will you do that?" Abraham Licht asked uneasily. "No one is closer than Smith and Daugherty: you would have to kill Smith, I am afraid, to get rid of him."

Means sucked energetically at his cigar; and, pretending their conversation might be overheard, he winked, and said, in a voice heavy with innuendo, "Oh as to that-however might that be managed!" even as, with a crude swipe of his elbow, he indicated the gun strapped about his spreading middle.

Abraham had reason to believe it was Means himself who'd sent death threats to the White House months before with the idea that, should the President request extraordinary security, he might be singled out for the task. But nothing had come of it; Harding had not taken the threats seriously, or had not cared a great deal about dying.

(Abraham himself had been issued a Police Service revolver, and a smart leather shoulder holster in which to carry it; but his gentlemanly scruples were such, he really couldn't bring himself to strap the foolish thing on. The revolver he kept locked in his desk at the Bureau, where it remained when he left in June of 1923.) AS IT HAPPENED, a few weeks following Means's conversation with Abraham Licht, Jess Smith was found dead in his apartment, an apparent suicide: clad in pajamas and dressing gown, a bullet through his head, and a revolver on the floor close by his person. (Which revolver was to disappear during the police investigation.) Anxiously, with sweat beading his face, Means a.s.sured Abraham Licht that Smith's death was but a coincidence-one of those odd, queer, fantastical things that seemed to be happening all the time now, in Was.h.i.+ngton-and that he had not a thing to do with it. "No more than Harry Daugherty himself," as he said, with a ghastly grinning stare.

At which Abraham Licht winced, and made no reply.

And, within a week, resigned his position at the Bureau as the industrious "Gordon Jasper Hine," fleeing the nation's capital forever.

Venus Aphrodite!-pray for me.

For where Abraham Licht loves, he must be loved in return: where he would surrender his soul, he must be granted a soul in return: otherwise The Game is wicked indeed.

And he will not be cheated again: not another time!

And though his manly prowess has been restored to him he can't deny that the years are flying by quickly now, and that, if he wants another son, or even another daughter, to continue his name, it must happen soon.

Venus Aphrodite!-have mercy.

IT IS KNOWN that one's Wish guides one's Destiny yet the patients at the Parris Clinic don't always thrive: which is an embarra.s.sment indeed, and necessitates a good deal of hurrying about, and telephone calls made, and tidying up.

(Though it has become the usual procedure now, that, when a patient pa.s.ses away, the body is kept in a sort of quarantine until after dark; at which time a special band of attendants, who can be trusted to keep their work confidential, loads it into a van and carries it to the county morgue twenty miles away, where, in the morning, the coroner-hardly a stranger to the Parris Clinic's routine, by this time-makes a discreet examination; signs the death certificate; and releases the body for delivery to a nearby funeral home. Beyond this, matters pertaining to the body's disposal rest with relatives of the deceased, though Doctors Bies and Liebknecht continue to be helpful, up to a point.) Patients don't always thrive but business thrives: no doubt it has to do with the fact that prosperity, in 1926, is at an all-time high; yet will rise, and rise, and rise!-as a variation (as philosophers of the economy have speculated) of the Law of Evolution.

Business thrives; and also disease.

But Abraham Licht has become restless yet another time, for, despite the fact that the Clinic is making a fair amount of money, and his experimental investments in the stock market (in the most conservative of commodities) have yielded a healthy return, he finds that he can't bear the company of "Felix Bies" (if indeed that is the man's name); and, since he has fallen in love with Rosamund, he begins to think that he must leave . . . he must leave, and begin another life.

For he quarrels too frequently with the charlatan Bies, whom he can no longer respect. Only a few years ago the man had struck him as clever, even rather brilliant in some of his notions; now alcohol has rotted his brain, and he has become as slovenly in his reasoning as in his person.

For what does it profit a man to excel at The Game, when his heart is no longer in it; when, indeed, his heart shrinks in revulsion from all that lies about him?

Venus Aphrodite, he thinks, excited as a young swain, and, like a young swain, confident that he will win his beloved-pray for me.

And now. This dreamy autumnal morning. The enthralled lover Moses Liebknecht sees the woman standing as in a trance on the gra.s.sy sh.o.r.e of the pond; her eyes shut, her beautiful face framed by untidy blackly gleaming hair to her shoulders. She is wearing a gray smock of the kind women patients wear to their hydrotherapy sessions; her legs are bare, and very white; and her feet.

Why has the woman led him here, out of sight of the Clinic?

Why has the woman led him here, where no one but he, her lover, observes?

As she steps into the pond he feels a quickening in his soul, as in his groin; he calls out her name, gently yet forcibly-"Rosamund!"-to awaken her, that she will at last surrender to the authority of his love.

As she will, and does.

For which Venus Aphrodite be praised.

"THE LOST VILLAGE"

A balmy evening in May 1928, and at Carnegie Recital Hall on Fifty-seventh Street, Manhattan, a small group of musicians and several singers, men and women in their twenties and looking very young, are presenting to a gathering of less than one hundred puzzled individuals a strange composition by the young composer Darian Licht-who happens also, with odd contortions and lurches of his lanky body, to be conducting. The t.i.tle of the work is Esopus, the Lost Village. The printed program describes it as a "tone poem with variations" but to the trained and untrained ear alike it appears to consist of a bewildering number of movements-stops and starts, really-and a bewildering number of tempos, one or two of which frequently detach themselves from the predominant tempo and in the form of a flute, oboe, or soprano voice, or what sounds like (in fact is, as the program notes confirm) the grating of pebbles in a wooden box, veers off in a direction rhythmically and totally unpremeditated. How is it possible, a piece of music in which performers drift off into reverie-like solos, independent of the others?-so that the effect is one of random sound, or noise; to which at intervals the audience's responses (restless coughing and murmuring, stifled laughter, expressions of incredulity, distaste and even anger) contribute yet another layer, or layers, of distraction?

This, the boastful "world premiere" of a work by an instructor at the Westheath School of Music, Schenectady, New York: chimes; sighs and explosions; a hint of church bells; the intrusion of a too-hearty march as it might have been played, circa 1880, by a marching band; an intonation of water? rain? flood? deluge? so faint it can scarcely be heard; an abrupt caterwauling of a trombone, a clarinet and a single old-fas.h.i.+oned E-flat cornet; a hint of piety (an allusion to "Gott, der Herr, ist Sonn' und Schild") countered by the rattling of the box of pebbles; a suddenly beautiful, but short-lived Kyrie from the singers-three young women and two young men who, as they sing, stare out bravely beyond the audience. A beat, two beats; an instrument that appears to be a long-necked gla.s.s beaker of the kind used in chemistry laboratories is earnestly blown into by the trombonist: it produces a queer high-pitched cooing, both eerily beautiful and comical, that arouses m.u.f.fled hilarity in the audience; another beat, and an intonation again of wind, rustling gra.s.ses, m.u.f.fled voices; and, abruptly, silence.

Silence! The most difficult music of all.

Conductor and performers freeze, like sculpted works. As the silence in the recital hall is too silent . . . apart from murmurings and rustlings and the commotion of patrons rising from their seats to slip, or to stalk, out . . . forcing one to listen to silence and how arduous silence is, how fraught with terror if one isn't accustomed to it. So earnest, so strained, so dazed and yet hopeful are the faces of the youthful performers and the conductor-composer Darian Licht, it seems evident that Esopus, the Lost Village is not meant to be a parody or a comical work, but a serious composition.

Sympathetic well-wishers, very likely relatives and friends of the performers, begin to clap, tentatively-for surely the piece is over?-but conductor and performers remain frozen for several further beats, and then, with remarkable aplomb considering the mood of the audience, the young Licht, face covered in a film of perspiration, longish hair damply straggling into his eyes, gives a swipe of his baton and the musicians begin again: brazenly, it would seem, in the slipping, sliding, dissonant tone that marked the opening of the piece; yet reversed, or upside down, so that the melodic lines emerge as if glimpsed in a mirror or in the broken, rippled surface of a body of water.

"What tras.h.!.+"

"How dare he!"

"Who is this-'Darian Licht'! And the 'Westheath Ensemble'!"

"Under the patronage of-can it be Joseph Frick's wife?"

"How dare they! Any of them!"

Harsh angry laughter. Rude mutterings. A woman complained to a companion that the music "stung her ears." Another patron, an elderly gentleman, spoke of being "nauseated." By the end of the forty-five-minute composition entire rows had emptied out, though disgruntled patrons remained in the foyer wanting to share derisive opinions. There had been only polite, scattered applause; a few hisses and boos; overall, a nasty combative mood from which Darian Licht's musical companions wished to s.h.i.+eld him, even as they hurriedly left the stage themselves. But Darian, hurt, puzzled and beginning to be angry, stood at the edge of the stage, baton in hand, hair in his face, gazing past the lights. A man's voice rose from the rear, "You ought to be ashamed! Desecrating music!" and Darian Licht said, stammering, "I-I should not be ashamed-you should be. You haven't listened, and you haven't heard. You-" Other voices rose in a kind of chorus, both male and female protesting they had heard, they'd heard more than they wanted, this was a desecration of music, hurtful and hateful to the ear; and Darian Licht protested in turn, "Why should I compose music that's already been composed? Why do you want to hear again, and again, and yet again, only what you've already heard? Always Mozart, and Beethoven, and-" but they shouted him down, "D'you think you're superior to Mozart? Beethoven? You? What a joke!"

So it ended, the premiere of Esopus, the Lost Village: the debut of Darian Licht, composer, at Carnegie Recital Hall, 23 May 1928.

EXCEPT THERE REMAINED, after most of the audience had gone away, a tall fair-haired man of youthful middle age, with an equally tall, though starkly black-haired female companion, who applauded loudly in the silence of the now lighted hall. "Such strange music! Like nothing I've ever heard. Yet, y'know-I know so little of music-it seemed to me the very voice of Our Lord-so unpredictable, I mean." This individual spoke so genially, in so frank and somehow tender a voice, Darian Licht stared at him in wonder. For wasn't that voice familiar, and . . . that face?

"Thurston?"

"Darian!"

Darian hurried down from the stage, and the tall fair-haired man came to embrace him heartily, as his companion, unmoving at the rear of the hall, looked on in silence.

Darian stammered, "But-Thurston? Is it you? You're-here?"

"In truth I'm not 'Thurston'-he's been dead and gone since 1910. And I'm not truly here, in Manhattan I mean; Sister Beulah Rose and I are bound for Florida, and have not really time to linger. Yet I wanted to see you, brother; and to shake your hand, and bless you; for, being your father's son, as I am, you will need the blessing of the Lord-the true Lord."

Much of this was lost on Darian, who stared at his brother, and at his brother's face, in shock that he was so altered. Not so much time had altered Thurston, it seemed, as some violent act: his broad, open, still-handsome face looked as if it had been broken vertically from the left temple to the jaw, and healed only partially. His eyes were unevenly aligned and his bristly eyebrows were scarred like lace. His once-blond hair shone an eerie metallic silver and his asymmetrical smile showed broken teeth. Yet he continued to smile as he spoke, introducing himself as "Reverend Thurmond Blichtman of the New Church of the Nazarene" and shaking Darian's hand so firmly, Darian feared his bones would crack. This was Thurston; yet not-Thurston; a youthful, vigorous, ebullient individual in cheaply smart clothes, whose entire being seemed to radiate a yearning to love and to be loved that was nearly overpowering. Yet, all the while, at the rear of the hall in the aisle stood the tall, Amazonian woman, with a face blunt and impa.s.sive as a trowel and eyes inexpressive as stones. "Sister Beulah Rose"-such stark, l.u.s.treless black hair, in a braid down her back, Darian was reminded of those Iroquois Indians who'd recently taken residence, under government coercion, on a reservation not far from Schenectady, in the rocky foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. Not a single word would Sister Beulah Rose utter, yet you could tell she had her own thoughts and pa.s.sed her own judgment.

No sooner had Thurston, that's to say Reverend Blichtman, introduced himself to his astonished brother than he was explaining how he must leave, for there was an urgent ministry awaiting him in Miami, Florida-"Not in material form yet but in a vision. Sister Beulah Rose and I have had the identical dazzling vision, of a pink-stucco church with strange, striking roofs, a kind of undersea green; so we must make our pilgrimage southward, to realize it." Already Thurston was striding up the aisle, and Darian hurried to accompany him. "But, Thurston-so soon? This is terrible! Can't you-" In alarm Thurston smiled, pressed a forefinger against his lips, and with a gesture of his head indicating that Sister Beulah Rose didn't perhaps know of "Thurston Licht" and should not know. "-'Thur-mond,'" Darian said quickly, clutching at his brother's elbow, "-can't you stay for an hour? We have so much to learn from each other." "Ah, I wis.h.!.+ I wish that was possible," Thurston, or Thurmond, said with a look of pain. "You are-a music instructor? In Schenectady? Not married, I believe? And estranged, Millie has told me, from Father?-like others of us." But already Darian's eldest brother was detaching himself from Darian, as his silent, impa.s.sive female companion fell into step with him exiting the hall. Like the Reverend Blichtman, Sister Beulah Rose wore cheaply stylish, attractive clothes, loose-fitting trousers and a man's jacket in a vivid fawn color; both wore white s.h.i.+rts open at the collar, workingman-style. Darian noted that both wore sleek, s.h.i.+ny black-polished boots of simulated leather. Ignoring Darian, Sister Beulah Rose s.h.i.+vered as a horse s.h.i.+vers, in antic.i.p.ation of open s.p.a.ces; clearly, she yearned to be gone from the airless recital hall. Her companion glanced smilingly at her and told her she might run ahead and fetch the truck and bring it around. Without a word, nor certainly a farewell glance at Darian, the handsome woman strode off and was gone. "Is she-'Sister Beulah Rose'-your wife, Thurston? I mean-Thurmond?" Darian asked, and Thurston laughed and said, "Sister Beulah Rose is her own woman, and not any man's." Out on Fifty-seventh Street, where traffic was pa.s.sing in a continuous stream, Thurston said, "Darian, farewell. Though I no more understand music than an ox, like any Christian I thrill to 'make a joyful noise unto the Lord' and am happy that, in your own way, you have done so." Like an anxious puppy, his face still gleaming with perspiration after the ordeal of his debut, Darian followed his brother along the sidewalk, in the direction of Seventh Avenue. He stammered, "But, Thurston-Thurmond?-you are a minister? You are ordained? 'The New Church of the Nazarene'-has it any connection to the church in Muirkirk?" His brother said, as if these words gave him pain, "Brother, I do believe! I believe in the truth of the Gospels as preserved for us in the Bible. I believe that Jesus Christ is my savior and the savior of mankind. Surely He saved me from death-not once but numerous times. And yet-" He was striding along the crowded sidewalk, crossing the wide, windy avenue as Darian hurried to keep up. "-and yet, Darian, at the same time I stand detached from my belief like a man observing his own hanging and I wonder if it isn't as unlikely and ridiculous as any superst.i.tious nonsense. Like the Fiji Islanders who wors.h.i.+p their own ugly man-eating G.o.ds or the Eskimos-G.o.d knows!-a polar bear." Thurston, or Thurmond, laughed suddenly and harshly.

Darian s.h.i.+vered, staring at his brother's handsome ruin of a face. That laughter so like mine, inhabiting my own heart.

By this time an open-backed truck the size of a hay wagon, in poor repair but painted a luridly bright green, had made its rattling way along Fifty-seventh Street and was idling close by at the curb. Well-dressed pedestrians glanced at it, smiling, and at the tall figure of ambiguous s.e.x behind the wheel. Preparing to climb into the truck, Reverend Blichtman hugged Darian with such zestful affection Darian winced, fearful his ribs had cracked. "Don't let narrow-minded fools dictate to you how you should feel about your own music," the elder man said pa.s.sionately, "-so long as you know your vision, Darian, that will suffice. All is ordained for us-'As above, so below.' If you are a musical genius-or if you are not-who among mere earthly ears can judge? G.o.d be with you, brother; and may Jesus Christ dwell forever in your heart." With these words, Reverend Blichtman, beaming, swung his large body up into the cab of the truck, managed to shut the door after two attempts, and raised his hand through the opened window in farewell. His lips quivered as if on the verge of a wide, maniacal grin (for perhaps Reverend Blichtman's parting words echoed dubiously in his own ears) that was the final vision Darian had of his long-lost eldest brother, as, running after the truck for a half block, drawing the attention of pedestrians, he shouted, "Good-bye! Good-bye!" and frantically waved.

Not having known how much I'd loved Thurston, till then. Till knowing there was no longer any Thurston, but only my memory. That ragged hole in the heart that music must fill-yet never fills.

The truck driven so capably by Sister Beulah Rose sped east on Fifty-seventh Street in the direction of fas.h.i.+onable Fifth Avenue, vibrating and rattling, exhaust spewing out its rear. Darian would have an impression afterward of words, Bible verses probably, in glaring red letters on its sides.

Its rear license plate, attached to the truck by wires, was caked in mud, unreadable.