“It is the Lord who makes me,” she told me, later. “He speaks to me. And when I fall to the ground I cannot stop myself; it is because I hear the most beautiful music, that seems to come from heaven itself.”
In truth I did not know if I could believe it. For we know of those who contract dancing fevers in the rainy season, when, for example, in Saint Vitus’s dance, one town makes its way to another in a state of shivering frenzy. It seemed to be a madness of that sort. Indeed, Albertus Magnus has written that women who do not receive their husbands can become full of poisonous blood and it is better for them to expel the matter, but my wife dismissed this opinion when it was offered.
Still, she did seek the counsel of authorities, including William Southfield of the Carmelites, and Dame Julian, the anchoress, in her little cell. These agreed that God was speaking to Katherine through her fits. And so my wife had a new path to follow, this time as a woman of faith. And in time she was no longer shunned on the street. She had earned respect and her demeanor improved.
But though Saint Augustine tells us we might atone for any sin between married people by acts of Christian charity, our relations did not resume. At night we got in bed as usual, well-bedded in white sheets and nightcap. We took off our nightclothes under the covers. But when I turned to Katherine, she would feign sickness, or scratch herself.
“I have worms!” she would say, slapping my hand away.
“No,” I assured her. “You have not scratched all day.”
“They come out at night!”
“Let me see . . .” and smiling I would reach out to her nakedness.
But she thrashed and spun away from me.
During this time I visited for the first time a student of my late father’s who had recently recovered from illness. Her maid showed me to where she lay on the daybed still in a dressing gown of yellow silk. She looked to be sixteen, as dark haired as a Jewess, with large brown eyes and rather dark skin. I did not think of her as lovely. I suppose that those who were said to be beautiful had very white skin and light hair, so it did not occur to me to define the girl in this manner. Then too, this dark girl covered her mouth in the manner of those with rotten teeth who have been trained not to offend others. So I sometimes covered my own sinister eye with my hand, or turned my face away, to avoid the onlooker’s gaze.
“I am Olivia,” she said meekly. “I am happy to meet you, and I know your father is with the Lord.”
I thanked her and asked her if she felt well enough to stand, for standing is the best way to sing. She nodded and, with some effort, hoisted herself up by the table stand.
“Let us begin with a recitation,” I said, “for in this way I shall know what I need to teach you.”
I do not remember much of the first song she sang, or even, exactly, my own reaction to it. My surprise was first that she sang a worldly song, popular in the courts of great men, and sung by troubadours. It made no mention of God.
But soon I had forgotten the song itself and marked the contrast between this girl and my typical student, who strained so on high registers; who, if she hit the note, often pushed into it like a German, or broke the tone in the manner of the French. Olivia’s voice lifted to each note directly, holding on the tone without excess of ornament or vibration—the sweet sound of a child. In its simplicity there was something wondrous about it, and I wanted to laugh and delight in it, rather than find something to teach her. Yet her nurse sat embroidering on the settle, and she would report to Olivia’s father. I had to begin with a suggestion, and so it came to me what I might add. For Isidore of Seville told us the voice should be “high, clear, and sweet” and indeed something was not entirely clear.
I asked, “You are aware of the epiglottis?”
Olivia shook her head. I asked the nurse to fetch ink and paper, and drew a small sketch of this leaf-shaped part. “If the tongue, perhaps swollen from sickness, is sliding backward, it may be clouding the tone of what my father—working, as you know, on the organ as he did, and noticing its similarity with the human capacity for two kinds of sound—might call the lower register.”
The nurse looked up attentively from her embroidery, while the student studied my sketch with a worried expression. I suppose that I wanted to lighten this expression, though I don’t remember thinking so, only that my throat ached, as it did in the moment when as a child, I raced to the window to find that the bird was not there.
“In spite of this,” I told her, “your voice at times comes close to a moment of perfection—what Jerome has called la pulchra nota. Let us begin to listen for it. Mostly it appears with no strain whatsoever. But be attentive, for when such a note comes, if you know it, you may ever after use its sound to guide you.” Then I smiled, for her brows were still knit in a childlike concern.
“Do not worry,” I said gaily. “It may be only a short while.”
And at this she smiled back at me quite fully and naturally. “Oh!” she said. “Do you think so?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
That I should not have said, I thought later. I myself had never reached such a note in singing. Why should I praise so strongly? Was there another reason to do so? In fact I went over the entire lesson in my mind for some reason, retracing what I had said and how I had said it, and I saw the image of Olivia’s open face, her easy joy in singing. Perhaps I retraced our conversation only to protract the lesson in some way during the week. In this way I could avoid my circumstances at home.
For that night as I turned the psaltery, Katherine put her head in her hands and sighed, and said it would be better not to play at all. I changed my course and the next evening sang only plainchant, making my voice as soft and comforting as possible.
But she drew her shawl about her shoulders and came to sit next to me on my stool. There she repeated to me that the music she heard in her mind, whose perfection made her yell and writhe, was not of the world, but came directly from the Lord. So worldly music and sounds were only poor imitations, distracting from worship, as all worldly pleasures do.
There was quiet that evening in our empty house, empty of the sound of children and empty of conversation, empty of music. It was a place where sound became odious to both of us—the crack of a stool, the creak of our bed as we settled there.
I tried again to approach my wife in the night, for it was cold and we slept with our clothes off as always, tucked under the foot of the bed. But she turned to me and spoke softly:
“John, I have given you sorrow. But the Lord has a remedy. We must go to the anchoress, declare celibacy, and I will again wear white.”
And she smiled, petting my face as if I were a child. This soft stroking of my skin, her face and breath held near to mine were so hateful to me that my jaw tightened and I fought an urge to strike her.
“No,” I told her.
“No?” she asked, as if she did not believe my refusal.
And I repeated, “No.”
The next day my wife did not eat. She couldn’t bear the strength of mead, she said, or of meat. And all that week and into the next she would only sip from the broth of a boiled root. She no longer spoke to me, and though it was winter she walked with no shoes, placing her toes first so that the boards would not sound when she entered a room.
After a fortnight, she was so weak that she fainted daily. Yet, leaning upon her maid, she went to church, and to the anchoress in her cell, and when they had seen her, the townspeople, including the neighbors who had shunned her, were drawn to this ethereal creature. Some came to our house to ask her advice, and for prophecy. They were embarking on a pilgrimage, they said, and wanted to know if the day they had chosen was auspicious. Would she pray for a woman on the brink of death, would she find out if this woman might indeed recover? Was another woman’s husband in heaven or purgatory? And though my wife seemed happy in this role, she continued to fast.
“Eat,” I coaxed her.
I knew her silent answer: I will eat again when yo
u come with me to the anchoress and take the vow.
Olivia’s strength improved as my wife’s waned. I had met with her three times over the course of that month. Often we talked at length before the lesson began, and if her nurse was in the room, she too might join in our conversation. These were easy, ordinary words, concerning the season, or the news of a birth or a neighbor’s pilgrimage, for example, but because I had no companion with whom to speak at home, they seemed the more delightful to me. Perhaps in any event the girl’s voice would have pleased me, so high was her laugh—it tinkled like a little bell.
Now she stood without grasping and did not need to clutch the table, and her singing had become so sweet and clear I could hear it in my head at night as I lay waiting for sleep. At those times too I sometimes found myself wondering if my own left eye was not very far off its course, after all. I had been observing it in the glass of late and it seemed to have improved. Or had I exaggerated its homely effect in the past? Was there any way I could be described as handsome? I had a large gap between my front teeth, but they were good. I was not tall, but strongly built. There was some pain caused by these thoughts, for I felt in some way that the Lord had removed me from his protection.
One day, on her last lesson of that month, Olivia was just in the middle of the “Rondel d’une Dame à son Amy,” from the Chasse Départ, in which a high sol was to be held for several measures. She smilingly ran through the notes in the early section, with no strain on her face but sometimes glancing at me, it seemed, to catch my eye:
Vivons toujours bien raisonnablement . . .
Let us always live justly
bearing our woes the most peacefully
that we can, without a single offense
to our love, for the first to fault
makes the other live inconstantly thereafter.
It was on the penultimate line, En nostre amour, car le premier qui faut—on its last syllable, faut—that Olivia soared over the high sol, lighting there delicately as the tone opened out into such exquisite vibrations that I cannot describe them, only that they seemed to fill the room and envelop us, so that we stood transported in their aftermath.
We rushed to each other, or really, the student to me. She threw her arms around my waist and I thought nothing of her nurse in the next room and embraced her, let myself gaze at her face turned up to mine, smilingly, and for this moment it seemed the most natural act in the world, so that there was no discomfort or thought of its being an embrace, and there was no need for words.
Still, she laughed and said, “I love you!”
I would like to end my story at this moment. I would like to linger here at the very crux of joy, where the note, and these words, were as one to me.
But I cannot. I then understood something about music that I had not learned from my father, or Jerome of Moravia, or Isidore of Seville. La pulchra nota is the moment of beauty absolute, but what follows—a pause, however small—is the realization of its passing. Perhaps no perfection is without this silent realization.
The wind that had lifted the bird, and the room, and those hearts within the room, grew still. I was as Adam in the garden—suddenly naked, suddenly shamed. I released her and stepped back. I remember that her smile remained, and then turned curious, so firm was her trust in the note.
“This is a good beginning,” I said. “But you have been ill and should not tax yourself.”
I suppose I said these words strangely. Later I wondered.
The student’s head fell on its stem and she sank onto the bench as if her weakness had returned. It pained me to see that she buried her face in her hands, but I had no experience with love, and its offices, and I did not know what to do. I turned and left without speaking more to her.
In the streets of the old city—with its sturdy Roman buildings, its flowerpots, its neat sewers—every young man I passed seemed a fitting mate for a young nightingale. They wore short tunics with toggles across the front, drawn tightly across their waists. I walked on into the new quarter, past the tanners, where the offal stank in its pile near the street and my house rotted and leaned against its neighbor. In a puddle I saw the blurred vision of my form in its long shabby houppelande, its stiff, high collar hiding my jaw, which I sensed now, in comparison to these young men, was weak and undistinguished. How I wished to be the beloved in the Song of Songs, whose eyes are like doves beside springs of water, bathed in milk, fitly set; whose legs are alabaster columns, set upon bases of gold! Even in youth I had never been the object of admiration, and so I had not minded youth’s passing, but I was now full of jealousy for these fashionably clothed young men. At the same time I was nearly delirious with joy. I replayed those words to myself, words my wife did not speak: I love you.
You may not know, if you have not been called ill formed and ugly from birth and a sweet young girl has never once looked at you in such a way, how thirsty I felt for all that had been denied me! Suddenly Olivia’s smooth face, dark as the curtains of Solomon, seemed very dear; I thought of my wife and the slack skin of her neck, her visions and writhing. I did not mind the vow of celibacy as much as I felt ashamed that in exchange for a healthy dowry, I had given up my right to love.
Of course, I wondered: Had Olivia meant to say she loved me? In fact, did she love the music and the note itself, her ability to sing it? Or perhaps my small part in bringing it forth? And if I loved Olivia, what did I love? The note? The girl herself? Or my own reflection in her eyes as someone worthy of such feeling?
So my thoughts crossed from happiness to unhappiness, and I could not sleep that night. I was bound for torture, it seemed, for love itself was a sin and promised the fires of hell; and lack of love a present torture. I suffered a kind of madness that could be relieved only by some act of goodness.
There my wife sat, slumped in her rocking chair, and her bony shoulders from behind were those of an old woman. She had borne such sorrow; she was dying there in that chair, too weak to rise and take herself to bed.
“You must eat,” I said softly.
“We must go to the anchoress,” she whispered.
And so I answered, “Yes.”
When I again crossed the canal to the old city to see Olivia, the deed had been done. My wife was at home in her white robes. She wore a special mantle and ring, having taken the vow with me through the little window carved for the anchoress to receive the sacrament.
Olivia’s nurse saw me into the study, and my hands trembled as I set down my music; as I spoke my normal pleasantries I stuttered. But when the student entered, her greeting was ordinary, and calm. Though she did not meet my eye, I wondered if I had imagined what had transpired just the week before as she began further on in the “Rondel”:
Desir mapprent telz regretz. . . .
Desire teaches me to know
such sorrows that I know not what can be born of them
And then suffering locks me in her prison
Vexation assaults me and beats me hard and fast
Alas, would you decrease my pain
Si vous pouvez. . . .
There it was, the beautiful voice, but the tone had become slightly reedy somehow. Or was it only when compared with la pulchra nota? But Olivia sensed a lack too, for she stopped singing and shook her head impatiently.
I hoped silently that I was responsible for her failure. For had I not been both happy and melancholy since her declaration of love? And Jerome tells us that melancholy is an obstacle to perfection, that no sound has true beauty if it does not proceed from the joy of the heart. But I was not brave enough to console her with this information.
“I believe,” I said, clearing my throat, “that you love the music because it comes from God. That is . . .”—here I began to sweat, and wiped my forehead with the long sleeve of my houppelande—“that is, you are devout, and love God, and the music comes from God. All we do well is from God, every image, every sound, and we return the glory to him. And we will continue in that vein.”
Here she stood and attempted the lines again, but her voice cracked and again she fell to the daybed heavily, shaking her head.
“I am sorry,” she stammered, blushing darkly. “I have told you that I love you,” she said, “and you did not reply. It is shame that causes my voice to weaken.” Her eyes were shining with tears.
These were the words I wanted to hear! But could I erase her shame and sadness? Yes, I should tell her that I returned her love. And I should embrace her; I should sing from the Song of Songs:
Your teeth are like a flock of ewes
that have come up from the washing.
All of them bear twins;
not one among them is bereaved.
And then she would be happy; and in this way I might hear the note again. She would love me the more for that.
The devil spoke to me thus: The note is no harm. It is beautiful, and how can beauty be harmful, when it brings such pleasure? And worldly love is not a sin, but only pleasure, of which you have been deprived.
But the Lord said, If you love the girl, would you profane her? You cannot marry her, though your own marriage be celibate. And to come each week, drawing on her hope, would be to crush and ruin her.
I blinked and regarded Olivia as if from a great distance, summoning the hate of Amnon for Tamar. “You have regressed,” I said. “Or I may have misjudged your ability. You may be capable of again reaching such a note, but it is no longer within my province.”
As in the beginning, before I had ever heard her sing, she lowered her head and covered her face in her hands, but this time her shoulders shook, and I saw that she hid her tears.
The Best American Short Stories 2014 Page 30
