by Kim Echlin
Donal set the yellowed box at Nyssa’s feet, the music in his wide pocket, his return post haste to his restless fiddler achieved and she still there.
Open it, he said.
Nyssa lifted the lid and folded back the old shelf paper. She had never had a dress in a box before. She lifted the material and couldn’t see which end was which. The bodice had no shoulders and zipped up the side. The skirt fell full and was cut on the bias from a nipped-in waist. Nyssa held it in front of her, then dropped the few ounces of fabric to the floor, slipped out of her familiar jeans and shirt and slithered on her knees into the centre of the dress like a child crawling into a tent. Squatting, she tugged up the bodice until it lay over her breasts and she twisted sideways to do up the zipper. Then she stood in a single motion, swept back her hair and tied it up on itself to reveal her full naked shoulders and back, the skirt clinging silkily to her thin hips and muscular stomach. Donal looked at the smooth skin over her clavicle and admired the round firmness of her upper arms.
Turn around, said Donal.
Wait, said Nyssa. There’s something else in the box.
She lifted out a pair of brocade boots in gold and cranberry and blue. She undid sixteen gold ball buttons along their sides and slipped them on her feet with delight.
They’ll fit when I do them up, she said, lifting her foot and clacking down the heel.
She reached into the box for the button hook. Slowly she pushed the little curved end inside each button hole and slid it around, looking for the button to pull through with a tiny pop. When she was finally finished, she straightened up and danced, then leaned over again to admire the boots, raised gold threads of swirling leaves wrapped round her ankles and feet.
She twirled, humming a strathspey, lifting up the full skirt and stepping, listening to the clatter of those curved heels, mocking the dress and adoring her boots.
He watched and imagined how the muscles of her back would throb when she was finally persuaded to stand still, to let the fabric hide those peculiar boots, to gravely lift her violin and play. He admired how the silky black cut a straight line under the lovely V that ran from her shoulders to her breasts firm and hidden, her neck’s curve fleetingly glimpsed through kinky hair when he asked her to let a few tendrils down. He imagined how she would be angled slightly toward their audience, lift her violin and play. The eyes of strangers would glimpse the nakedness of her arms and back and clavicle, the concentrated tilt of her head and the clarity of her brow. Strangers would hear what he heard and watch what he possessed, music and muscles, sinew and flesh.
The wake-robin Nyssa picked for Dagmar died and hung brown and folded over on the bedside table. Bed mites collected on the leaves’ waxy surfaces and the stem shrivelled. The water was dried and gone.
Norea shook her daughter, wrapped up in bed, and said, Dagmar, I’ve been dreaming of your father.
Mother, he’s been dead sixty years, said Dagmar, pulling herself up. I never met the man.
Of course you did. He loved you like you were his own skin. Don’t you remember the little deal cradle he made you?
He didn’t, Mother. You told me that this morning, and yesterday, snapped Dagmar.
Norea saw the little cradle. Her three youngest brothers had all slept in it. She stopped, perplexed. But stubbornly she said, Of course he did—you just don’t remember.
Dagmar saw the blue ridges around Norea’s lips. I’m taking you to the school. It’s too cold to leave you here.
This is my house and I’ll do in it as I please and I won’t leave it! With stiff hands Norea swept away the bits of dried petals lying on the table beside Dagmar’s bed. If you don’t like it, get your own house!
She thrashed at the rest of Nyssa’s dead plant and Dagmar snapped, Don’t touch that. Don’t talk to me like this!
Norea heard the axe edge in her daughter’s voice but she could not remember who Dagmar was. With a forest animal’s instinct she spat out, Filthy shrine, and knocked the small vase to the floor.
Stop it! Dagmar got out of bed and crossed the room. She looked back and saw the strange old Irish woman mumbling something in a foreign tongue and she sat down and sobbed.
Norea heard her little girl crying and her memory came back again. She went over to her, caressed her head, crooned, Don’t carry on. It hurts my eyes to look without seeing you. Then memory flickering back confused, she said, No one can cross the river when it is full of ice. Wait till the melt and then we’ll go get her. Let her go, Dag, a girl has to go. You did!
No! raged Dagmar, brushing her old mother’s hand away, It is not the same. I never left the island. I could throw a pebble from Colin’s house to yours. I hear the throbbing of her voice in the storm. A girl must have a way back.
She left the room, went into the kitchen, threw on her coat and walked outside. Alive, Nyssa had disappeared into darkness. Ice fell and the sky cracked. Dagmar could no longer retrieve the details of Nyssa’s nose, her lips, her cheeks. She could not finger her hair or look into her green eyes. She could not smell her or hear the sound of her voice. She could only feel the pain and easing of a baby latching to her breast.
She lamented, Nyssa, my daughter, my dolour. Nyssa child of mine. Air faìl irìnn ì rirìnn. Nyssa, where are you? Speak daughter, any tongue. Long-limbed, spinning steps and fiddling fingers, one cocked eyebrow under all that kinked hair, doom-eager. You cannot disappear, free creator of yourself. Earth will stay frozen to its core until my eyes rest on you once more.
Together Donal and Nyssa listened as the ground bass set out the melody of the “Passacaglia” in a stately triple metre, nimbly followed by the violin with its playful polyphonic variations. Fiddle tripping, bass embracing, daa ta daa ta daa ta daa, fiddle dancing, bass leaping, each seizing hold of the other in grace, in delight, in melancholia and teasing. They parted and returned, sometimes sensual, sometimes in strife, playful, grave, tender, restrained and released by form, their two different beings one in the last variation, golden threads made divine in the music until they were torn asunder and rendered silent. Dominant to tonic, Handel’s shantih and amen.
Donal marked up the score while Nyssa rested on the floor, hearing the music inside. She rose and traced her finger across the notes, absorbing the sound through her eyes, through her whole naked body. She picked up her violin and picked out bits of its melodies, the witty plucking, the dramatic crescendos. Together they worked through the music, hour after hour, becoming the notes, becoming the dance, their instruments ringing together.
Handel, she sniffed when they were done. I want something fresh. Play that harmonic for me again.
Twenty-five days she’d been gone, she figured by the moon. He talked of concerts on the mainland and of playing for strangers. He wanted her to play her Tartini, and he his Bottesini. He wanted to dress her. He wanted to end with their “Passacaglia.” The sounds of these words tripped like precious little chirps from his lips and offended her. What about a set of reels? she had said. He shook his head. Not fancy enough for you? she scoffed. I’ll show you what I’ll play for them. She lifted her little fiddle under her chin and played a long drone. On top of it three clear harmonics, then she stepped a little dance.
The world will beat a path to our door, he said when she was done, but not for that.
She laughed at him and said, Who cares for the world at the door? When it comes I turn it away.
What do you want, then? he asked.
She stopped, then said, I want to write the music I hear and cannot yet play.
His brow furrowed and he said, And what is this music?
She hesitated. I heard it once when I slipped and fell under an ice pan into the harbour. I’ve heard it when I’m up on the gaze with Moll. I hear it under pine needles on the rocks.
Moll! He scoffed. What does she know about music? You can play Tartini. Precious few can.
He watched Nyssa’s eyes go blank and made himself stop. Then he said, Let’s talk about it more later. Come,
let’s work on our breath.
She relented once again and sat facing him cross-legged, knees dropped loosely on the floor, the palms of her hands resting open on her knees. Stiffer Donal sat hips taut, chin tipped, and showed her elaborate breathing routines he had invented to match the phrasing of the music. Nyssa practised taking short inhalations to mark new phrases.
Don’t get involved with your breath, said Donal, but know where it begins and ends.
She let her breath out. She could see her mother’s rare flax spreading its ocean of blue blossoms toward the sky.
Donal watched her nostrils go soft and said, Good. The breath holds the tempo, projects the sound.
Annoyed by his intruding talk she stopped suddenly and flung her feet in front of her. I’m sick of this! she said. I’ll breathe how I want!
She jumped up, raised her fiddle and played a difficult passage, holding her breath. When she was done, she dropped her violin and said, sucking in air, There!
Donal said, But it didn’t ring. Intonation is the most important element of volume and projection. It improves with the breath.
Leave me alone! she said.
Donal reached out to stroke her lovely bowing biceps and the smooth muscles of her thighs. He touched her neck with kisses, whispered apologies, promised not to correct her ever again. He wanted the taste of her salt tears as much as he wanted her other briny flavours. She wondered how the flat emptiness inside had come. She had entered him as a swimmer enters death.
Her body still tingling and wretched she left for her own room. There she rocked on her heels and stared out the window. She examined the astrean light on the trees. Who knows I am not dead? she thought. Does my mother think of me? I am completely lost in him. Smelling the earthy odours of their lovemaking between her legs, she thought, Is this love? No sooner did she sponge him off in tingling ice-melt than he came to find her and they were wrapped together again. My body, she thought with disdain, is a grave that accepts anything. He plays it over and over and over. I despise it and then when I have been away a little I want him again. I am suffocated by him. And freed. She stared into the darkness.
All things in nature have a latent song, things dreaming until a breath gives them voice. The tune in the hollow reed, the echo in the cave. Breath in. Breath out. With each breath, new life.
What time is it? yawned Nyssa.
I am your clock and your season, teased Donal, laying down his tray on the bed.
If you are my clock and season, then I am only a month old and the season is spring. But look out the window, it’s cruel ice everywhere.
The better to keep you here wrapped in my arms. She said, And why would you keep me with ice when you could set me free to fly back to you with love?
Nyssa dumped whisky into her tea and drank it down. She reached for her music pad and wrote in it playfully, then passed it with the pen over to Donal who blew on his coffee.
Dear Mr. Donal Dob,
I am looking for a future. But all I am interested in are sounds you say are not music. If I can find a future with you, please meet me in five minutes on the south side of the bed. Of course, I will need to know the time!
Yours sincerely,
Nyssa Nolan
RSVP (here!)
Donal willingly took the pad. A new game. He picked up the pen and wrote back:
Miss Nyssa,
By what miracle would you be attracted to hoary old me? Reponse: oui. In your monochord there is no melody. What do you see in that awful droning and plinking?
Yrs.,
Donal
P.S. You carry all songs under your tongue.
He handed her the book and pen, slid to the bottom of the bed and Nyssa stood up and shuffle-stepped toward him over the blankets and sheets, hair wild from the night, writing in large loops that filled up the page:
Dear Donal,
You didn’t tell me the time. I arrived on the losing of the moon. The sky is dark again. May the angels protect you. Has your mind ever hummed with the twangling of the earth? Why do you find it awful?
Fiddlingly,
Nyssa
She tossed the notebook down beside him. He tried to reach for her ankles but she shook her head, pointing to the pen, a stern finger on her closed lips. Reluctantly he picked up the pad, read and wrote again:
Dear N,
Harmony in the balance and order of the generations. Can that be exhausted by such as us?
Angelically,
Donal
Nyssa squatted beside him, reading upside down, and grabbed the pen out of his hand as he finished his signature. Then she took the notebook far away to the pillows at the top of the bed, turned the book right side up and read what he wrote. She wrote back:
Dear Angelic (Good? Bad?) Donal,
Even an angel is burdened with wings. You lack valour. I’m tired of never being alone. I am weighed down by musty counterpoint. And I’m tired of you wanting to be always right. And safe.
N.
Solemnly she handed back the book and he looked up as if to speak. Again she raised her finger to her lips and pointed. Donal knew the fruit of strict obedience to the rules of her games and silently he wrote:
Dear Nyssa,
I will love you for all eternity. I cannot account for you playing with equal exquisiteness all that I give you. I cannot account for you wanting both me and solitude. I cannot account for your restlessness or your talent or your taste.
Dear Donal,
But you can prevent me from achieving what I want.
Dear Nyssa,
Let us perform our “Passacaglia.” The world will listen. In time you will feel differently.
Dear Donal,
You talk of performing when I talk of being alone. You talk of counterpoint when I think about bone on metal. Is this what love becomes?
How sinewy her body had grown. How strange she had become even to herself. Nyssa closed her door and laid empty staves out on the floor and tried to write. Note after note after note. She crawled, squatted, sat cross-legged, leaning over her paper, back cramped, hands sliding the paper from one side to the next. Only one line of music on each piece of paper. She played them and threw them aside dissatisfied, was strangled by the five lines and four spaces of the staves, boxed in by the bars, by the treble clefs, weighed down beneath what she knew had been written before. She wrote from memory. She drew a long score for a prepared piano and crumpled it up. She hummed her Millstone Nether tunes. She worked from the high technique of choice, wilfully limiting herself, wilfully eliminating all that was not hers.
Bewildered and searching she copied out the wordless songs she’d heard her grandmother singing in the cairn. She listened to the melody moving in its narrow range, series of tiny motives growing attached like crystals of ice and building exquisite shapes. Ancient and honoured, melismatic or plain. But even that wasn’t what she wanted.
The walls could not hold what she had to say and neither could her old fiddle. Something was consuming her and stopping her from the straightened flame of the hearth. She was driven to write what bullied her insides. Her womb ached. Pain throbbed through her and she pressed her skin against the cold glass of the window.
She wrapped herself up and walked outside along the edge of the rocky cliffs overlooking the sea. She crouched on the frozen ground and chipped a little depression into it. She listened to the winds and the ice and heard inside her all the sounds of Millstone Nether. She forbade Donal to come into her room that night as she played over and over all the harmonics her little fiddle could find. She played them in rhythms like the sound of ice under water. Sound without tune or tradition, thinly awaiting density. In these notes she wished to elaborate pattern, structure, energy, surprise, joy. In these notes she wished to find pitches no one had heard before, waiting like baby spiders to be born. She wanted this. More than home. More than love. She was fed up with Donal’s tiny rooms, his tired music, his plan to perform. She wanted her rhythms that sounded from the d
arkness and the bottom of the sea. She had to go back.
In the other room she heard Donal running his finger up and down his long strings, changing the pitch on his natural harmonics in a way that she could not on her fiddle. His practice said through the wall, I can do anything.
Donal knocked on her door and pleaded with her, You can’t not play with me. We no longer exist apart. Without me, no bass. Without you, no soaring.
She said, That means nothing to me.
Impatiently he dropped his hands and said, There were times on Millstone Nether before the spring of the barrels of instruments when the people were so poor they had no fiddles. I’ve heard stories of the first kitchen parties where an old man took a piece of board and some string, took sap straight from the trees for rosin and played it. Look at your fiddle. And you don’t want to play it?
She mocked him, saying, What a cruel sad story. Scattered few would believe that one.
He laughed then, and he bowed the opening bars of “Narcissus” and she could not prevent her body quickening and she let him pull her to him one last time. But as soon as he was making love with her, con expressione di patimento, she became distracted and her mind fingered over a tale her nana used to tell her about the beginning of the world.
