Revolution

by Jennifer Donnelly

  Dad finishes his phone call, too. “G left you some more books on Malherbeau,” he tells me. “On the coffee table.”

  I walk across the room to check them out, grateful for a distraction, and find that one of the books contains scores—including a Concerto in B Minor that I’ve never seen before. My croissant’s forgotten. So’s everything else. I put the book down and take the old guitar—the one G let me play last night—out of its case. I start reading the score, fingering the chord progression as I go, trying to see how the notes lie on the strings. Which is hard. Malherbeau must’ve had fingers like a chimp—a chimp on speed—to hit these chords so fast. They’re all over the place. I start to play what I’m seeing, feeling totally blown away by how amazing this eighteenth-century tune sounds on this eighteenth-century instrument.

  And then, before I’m even halfway through the first page, Dad says, “Can you stop, please? I’m trying to work.”

  “So am I,” I say testily.

  He turns around. “You need to start on your thesis, not play your guitar.”

  “This is my thesis.” Or more accurately, it would be my thesis, if I was still planning on doing one.

  He looks skeptical. “Really? What’s your premise?” he says.

  “That if there was no Amadé Malherbeau, there would be no Radiohead,” I say, hoping that ends it. But no.

  “Why Malherbeau? What was so special about him?” He looks like he’s actually interested in what I’m saying. Which is unusual.

  “He broke a lot of rules,” I say. “He refused to write pretty harmonies. Got way into the minor chords. And dissonance. He started playing around with the Diabolus in Musica, and—”

  “The what?”

  “The Diabolus in Musica. The devil in the music.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “So funny, Dad.”

  He smiles at his lame joke, then says, “No, really. I’m serious.”

  “It’s another name for an augmented fourth,” I say.

  “And an augmented fourth is?”

  I hesitate before I answer. Because I’m suspicious. This is too weird, this sudden interest in music. He’s up to something.

  “It’s a tritone—an interval that stretches across three tones,” I finally say. “It’s used to create dissonance in harmonies.” He looks blank. I think for a minute, then add, “You know when Tony sings ‘Maria’ in West Side Story? That’s a tritone. Tritones are in the opening bars of ‘Purple Haze,’ too. And in the theme song to The Simpsons.”

  “But why is it called the devil in the music?”

  “Well, one answer is that tritones can sound off-kilter, a bit sinister. But it’s really more about the tritone creating harmonic tensions in a piece of music—and then leaving that tension unresolved. Kind of like asking a question that can’t be answered.”

  “And that makes it devilish?”

  “The tritone got that name during the Middle Ages because church authorities didn’t like questions. People who asked too many questions tended to find themselves tied to a stake and set on fire. The church didn’t allow the guys who composed sacred music—which was like, the best gig a musician could get back then—to use tritones.”

  I’m into it now. Really blabbering away. Because there’s nothing I love more than a good, freaky tritone. In fact, I’m so into it that I forget my suspicions. Forget my doubts. Forget that I know better.

  “So Malherbeau was the first to use them?” he asks.

  “No, Dad. Changes in harmony—in the accepted ideas of what harmony should be—began waaaay before Malherbeau. Composers started to break away from the old rules during the Renaissance. By the Baroque era, Bach was using tritones—sparingly, yeah, but he was using them. Same with Haydn and later Mozart. Then Beethoven came along and turned the dial up on dissonance. And Malherbeau, who was influenced by Beethoven, turned it up even higher.”

  “But Beethoven didn’t play guitar. He played piano.”

  “Yeah … so?”

  “So how did he influence a guitar player?”

  I want to slap my own forehead. “Um, Dad? Guitarists don’t just listen to guitars. They listen to music. You can hear Malherbeau’s guitar in Liszt’s piano. You can hear it again, much later, in Debussy and Satie. And then in Messiaen, a nutty French composer who went way off into left field and did all this crazy sh—stuff, like inventing his own instruments and listening to birdsong. You can hear Malherbeau in America, too. In a lot of blues and jazz stylings. John Lee Hooker drew from him. So did Ellington and Miles Davis. A lot of alt bands like Joy Division and the Smiths show his influence.”

  “So how would you actually demonstrate the comparisons?” he asks, interrupting me.

  “With examples,” I tell him, impatiently. “And then there’s Jonny Greenwood, who’s totally Malherbeau’s musical heir. A guitarist who’s pushing boundaries again, just like Malherbeau did, creating something new and gorgeous, and—”

  “Hold on. What examples?” Dad asks.

  “Bits of music. Phrases from the pieces I’d be referencing. As part of a PowerPoint presentation. Why?”

  He crosses his arms over his chest and frowns. “I don’t know, Andi. I think it sounds risky. Tough to pull off. I think at this stage it would be wiser just to do a paper on Malherbeau alone. Discuss his life and work, and then include a bit about his legacy at the end. You need a decent grade on this.”

  I feel sucker punched. So that’s what this is all about. He doesn’t give a damn about music or why it matters to me. This is about grades. Everything’s about grades with him.

  I know that. I know him. So why did I get my hopes up? Why did I think it would be different this time?

  “What are the other kids doing? What format is Vijay using?”

  “He’s writing a paper.”

  “Look, I really think that—”

  “Forget it,” I say, shutting up. And shutting down.

  “Forget it? Forget what? Your thesis?” he says, his voice rising. “I’m not going to forget it, Andi. And neither are you. Do you have any idea how important this is? If you don’t complete your thesis, you can’t graduate. If you do complete it, and it’s any good, it might—I stress the word might—help offset the classes you failed this semester.”

  He talks on, but I’m not listening anymore. I’m wishing. Wishing he could hear music. Wishing he could hear me. Wishing that for just a minute or two, he would close his eyes and listen to Malherbeau’s gorgeous Concerto in A Minor, the Fireworks Concerto, and feel what I feel. Feel the sound echoing in the hollows of his bones. Feel his heart find its rhythm in quarters and eighths.

  I’m wishing he could hear that bleak metallic sample in Radiohead’s “Idioteque” and recognize the Tristan chord, the one Wagner used at the beginning of Tristan and Isolde. He might know that that particular sample came from a Paul Lansky piece, composed for computer, called “mild und leise,” or he might not, but he’d surely recognize that four-note bad-news chord. He’d know that even though the chord’s named for Wagner, Wagner didn’t invent it. He heard it in Malherbeau’s Fireworks Concerto and he took it and stretched it out and made it resolve to A instead of D. Then he passed it down to Debussy, who used it in his opera, Pelléas et Mélisande. And Debussy passed it down to Berg, who retooled it for his Lyric Suite, and Lansky took it from Berg. And Radiohead took it from Lansky and held it out to me.

  I’m wishing he could see that music lives. Forever. That it’s stronger than death. Stronger than time. And that its strength holds you together when nothing else can.

  “Andi? Are you listening? If you can turn it around next semester, get an A on your thesis, and get out of St. Anselm’s with a solid B average, you can get into a decent prep school. Spend a year there pulling up your grades and then maybe I can get you seen at Stanford. The dean of admissions is a good friend of mine.”

  “I didn’t know Stanford has a music program,” I say.

  He gives me a long, hard lo
ok, then says, “St. Anselm’s tested you—”

  “Yep. I know all about it.”

  “—in kindergarten. And fifth grade. And ninth. You scored in the high one-fifties every time. Genius level. Like Einstein.”

  “Or Mozart.”

  “You can do anything with your life. Anything you want.”

  “Except what I want.”

  “Andi, music just isn’t enough.”

  “Music is enough. It’s more than enough,” I say, my own voice rising now.

  I’m trying to keep the anger down. Trying not to start another fight. But it’s hard. Real hard.

  “How is music going to pay your bills, Andi? What kind of money can you possibly make playing guitar? We can’t all be Jonny Radiohead, you know.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  He starts to say something else, but doesn’t finish his sentence because his cell phone rings.

  “Who? Dr. Becker’s office? Yes. Yes, I am. Please put him on. Matt? Hi. What is it? What’s happened to her?”

  14

  My heart nearly stops.

  “What is it?” I say.

  He holds up a finger. “She did? No, no … of course not … yes, I agree, Matt.”

  “What happened? Can I talk to her?” I say frantically.

  “Matt, hold on,” Dad says. He covers the phone. “Your mother had a bad reaction to the antipsychotic Dr. Becker gave her. He’s stopped it and called to let us know and to talk about trying a new drug.”

  “Can I talk to her?”

  “No. She’s recovering.”

  “Can I talk to him? I want to talk to him.” I’m desperate now.

  Dad nods. “Matt? Hi. Sorry. Look, Andi’s worried about her mother. She wants to speak with you,” he says, then hands me the phone.

  “Hello, Andi. How’s Paris?” Dr. Becker asks me.

  “Is my mother okay?”

  “She reacted badly to a drug. Nausea and vomiting, mainly. It’s not uncommon.”

  “Is she painting? She’s not too sick to paint, is she?”

  There’s a pause, then Dr. Becker says, “Andi, your mother needs to face her grief. If there’s any hope of her becoming functional again, she needs to confront her loss head-on, not submerge her feelings in her artwork.”

  “Okay, yeah, but she needs to paint,” I say, in no mood for his shrink rap.

  Another pause, then, “No, she’s not painting.”

  “But I packed her paints for her. And a portable easel and some canvases. I left them in her room. I showed her where I put them.”

  “I know you did. I removed them.”

  “You what?” I say. And then it’s zero to lava in five seconds. “You weasel! I can’t believe you did that!”

  “Give me the phone,” Dad says. He walks toward me, reaching for it, but I turn around so he can’t take it.

  “Andi, I realize you’re upset, but I assure you, your mother will make progress with drug therapy. Visible, measurable progress,” Dr. Becker says.

  “You mean she’ll become a zombie. When the drugs work. Like me. And when they don’t, she’ll be a total psycho. Like me.”

  “As I was saying, we’ll be able to chart her progress—”

  “Progress? How is a painter not painting progress? What’s she doing? Making potholders? She needs her paints and her brushes. Don’t you get that?”

  “Andi—”

  “It’s a good thing you and your pills weren’t around a few hundred years ago or there never would have been a Vermeer or a Caravaggio. You’d have drugged Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Taking of Christ right the hell out of them.”

  “Andi!” Dad says. He’s got hold of the phone now. He’s pulling it away from my head.

  I call Dr. Becker a douche. I tell him I want to speak to my mother. He tells me I can’t. Not in this state. I’ll only upset her. Then I call him something worse.

  “That’s it,” Dad says, wrenching the phone out of my hand. He holds it to his head. “I’m sorry, Matt. I need a few minutes. I’ll call you back.”

  He hangs up, then starts yelling at me. “That was totally uncalled for. You are out of control. You’re going to calm down and then you’re going to call Dr. Becker back and apologize.”

  I’m so upset, I’m pacing around and around the table. “Why’d you do it?” I yell back. “Why’d you put her in that place?”

  “To help her get better. She’s sick, Andi.”

  “She was getting better! She’d stopped crying all the time. She’d stopped throwing things. She needs to be home. In her house. With her work.”

  Dad says nothing for a few seconds, then he says, “You need to stop. You need to let go. You think you can fix it. Fix her. You think you can make it better, and if you can do that, then—”

  “Do you remember ‘The Frog Prince’?” I say, cutting him off.

  “The what? No. No, I don’t.”

  “It was Truman’s favorite story when he was little. It goes like this: Once there was a young prince. He had a servant. One day the prince was taken away and changed into a frog. When this happened, the servant’s heart broke. Only three iron bands could hold it together, only they could—”

  “Life’s not fairy tales. Don’t you know that by now?”

  “Mom’s heart is broken.”

  “Andi, your mother told you. I told you. The counselor told you. Everyone told you. It wasn’t your fault.”

  I laugh. Or try to. It comes out like a moan.

  Dad takes his glasses off and pinches the bridge of his nose. We stay like this, standing across the room from each other, for a minute or so. And then I can’t do it anymore.

  “I’m going out,” I say.

  “Fine. Do what you like. I give up,” he says.

  “Gave up,” I correct him. “A long time ago.”

  I grab my guitar and my bag and run down the stairs and out of the building, and start walking east. To where, I don’t know. Somewhere I can sit and play and drown out the entire world and everyone in it. Especially my father.

  Because what he said is wrong and we both know it.

  It is my fault. Mom’s heart is broken because of me.

  I’m the one who killed her son.

  15

  I walk.

  For miles and miles. Down the Rue St-Jean to the Rue du Faubourg St-Antoine. Then west to the Place de la Bastille. I keep walking. Into the heart of Paris. It’s about two o’clock by the time I get to the Rue Henri IV. It’s a weekday, in winter, and the streets are quiet. I keep going. South. To the river.

  I can play there. No one will tell me to stop. No one will tell me music’s not enough, when music’s the only thing I’ve got.

  I get to the water, trot down a flight of narrow stone steps, and I’m on the quai—a wide stone walkway that hugs the river. There’s a bench nearby. I put my guitar and bag on it, take out my phone and call Dr. Becker’s office. Get voice mail. Call my mom’s cell. Get voice mail. Then I sit down and take off my boots and socks. My feet are killing me. I find a couple of Band-Aids, tape them over my blisters, and put my socks back on.

  I made a few stops along the St-Antoine. At an art supply store, a Chinese grocery, and a vintage clothing shop. I dig in my bag, take out the things I bought, and put them on the bench. Paints and brushes. A canister of tea with flowers on it. A jeweled compact and six glass buttons and a perfume bottle. They’re all for my mother. I’m going to send them to her.

  I’m going to make up stories about each one. Like she used to do. I’ll write them all down and tell her that the buttons came off one of Edith Piaf’s dresses and the perfume bottle belonged to Josephine Baker and the compact was used by a member of the Resistance who carried secret messages in it.

  I wish I could see her face when she opens the box. I wish I wasn’t here, sitting on a bench in the cold. I wish I was home with her. I wish she was painting and I was playing. In the evening in our parlor. In the half-light. In our shared, unspeakable pain.
<
br />   There’s a soft splash below me. I stand up, walk to the edge of the quai and see a rat swimming away. He dives, disappearing under the gray surface of the Seine, and I think how easy it would be to follow him. All I’d have to do is take a step. One step. The water would be ice cold. There’d be a short struggle, then nothing.

  My phone rings. I open it without looking at the number.

  “Hello?” I say, hoping really hard that it’s my mother, not Dr. Becker.

  “We have a lesson now, ja?”

  “Nathan? Nathan! Oh, no. Oh, shit!”

  I can’t believe I forgot. God, how stupid. It’s morning back home. Tuesday morning. I scheduled lessons with Nathan on Tuesdays and Fridays during break.

  “What has happened?” he asks now, sounding worried.

  “I’m in Paris, Nathan. For three weeks. I don’t want to be, but my father came home and he … he took my mom to a hospital. A mental hospital. He said she needed to go and that I couldn’t stay by myself and that he was going to Paris for work and that I had to go with him, so here I am. I should have called you to let you know. I totally forgot. I’m really sorry, and—”

  Suddenly my voice breaks and I’m crying. I can’t help it. I miss my mother. I miss Nathan. I miss Brooklyn. I’m cold and scared and sick—sick of explaining, sick of being a head case and a screwup, sick of the sadness that stalks me every minute of every day everywhere I go.

  “Andi?” Nathan says, but I can’t answer him.

  Do it, you loser, I’m telling myself. Do it, you coward. Do it and be done. Come on. One step and you’re in the water.

  “Andi, listen to me. Listen.”

  Just one small step.

  “Did you know that Bach lost his young daughter, and three sons, and then his wife, Maria Barbara?” Nathan says. “Did you?”

  I take a breath, quick and convulsive. “No.”

  “Then he and Anna Magdalena, his second wife, lost four more daughters and three sons. Eleven beloved children dead. Eleven, ja?”

  “What are you saying, Nathan? That eleven is more than one? So I’ve no right?”

  “Many scholars of music have asked themselves: How could Bach survive such grief? How did his lungs push the air in and out of him? How did his heart not stop? And most of all, how did he continue to write music? The cantatas. The cello suites. Masses. Concertos. Some of the most beautiful music the world has ever heard. Do you know how he did this? I will tell you.”