The River in Winter

by Matt Dean

  The archaic poetry of the King James Version appealed to me. The chatty annotations only added to the allure-I wanted to read them, to see what my predecessor had thought and felt while reading this Bible.

  Hugging the Bible and McNamara's book to my chest, I made for the stairs. Along the way I noticed that The Joy of Gay Sex had not sold, after all. On a hard wooden chair tucked away into a niche beside the stairs, the book lay open to an illustration of two men having sex. The bottom was on all fours. The top knelt behind him, between his legs, grasping his hips.

  I stopped. I stared. I couldn't help myself-I stopped, and I stared.

  We all have our temptations, Eliot had said. We all have our trials. Some thorn in the flesh.

  * * *

  21 - Slave to the Rhythm

  Side seventeen of the Guarneri Quartets-the C-sharp minor quartet-had not been off my turntable in weeks. In all that time I had seldom allowed the needle to travel beyond the first movement, the mournful fugue.

  I switched on the stereo, turned up the volume, set the needle. Settling into the easy chair, I opened the Bible across my lap. Again, as in the bookstore, I turned to Romans.

  In Turn the Page, the King James Version had seemed romantic, poetic, somehow more authentic than the other versions. But I had only glanced through a couple of passages. Now, after a few of the antique verses-the chapter opened with a circuitous, rambling salutation-I found myself regretting my choice. My mind began to wander. My eye began to wander.

  Elizabeth Weitzel had underlined a passage early in the first chapter:

  For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.

  Miss Weitzel's underscoring was obsessively tidy-the lines absolutely regular in length, perfectly straight, entirely consistent in their placement beneath the lines of text.

  An arrow connected "recompense" to a word written sideways in the margin: "DEATH!" A dire, forbidding word, and Elizabeth had written it in an unusually ominous way. Instead of pencil, she'd used blue ink. Instead of her customarily trim printing, she'd outlined fat, three-dimensional letters, had hatched and stippled and shaded them. Her heavy pen had dimpled the page.

  I flipped ahead. Again I found the page I had first seen in the bookstore-"Slaves to sin are free from righteousness" along the top.

  In the following chapter, on the facing page, more underscoring:

  For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.

  "In me-in Lizzie-dwelleth nothing good!" Elizabeth had written. Her exclamation point was wavy and twice as tall as the adjacent "d" of "good."

  A lump formed in my throat. What had Eliot said? The Old Testament was all about the law, but the New Testament was all about love? I wasn't, as yet, feeling the love.

  I closed the Bible and set it aside. I took up Beethoven in London, opened it. It opened with Beethoven standing in the bow of a boat.

  The wind was cold. The boat surged over the waters of the Channel, through foam and chop. He turned to Schindler, whose heavy cape flapped in the wind.

  "You asked me where I get my ideas," Louis said. He laid his hand on his breast. In his coat pocket he felt the conversation book, the very one in which Schindler had written his question.

  Louis went on. "They come unsummoned, directly, indirectly. I could seize them with my hands. Out in the open air, as now, with the wind off the water, the surging of the surf. Or in the woods, walking in the silence of the nights. Early in the morning. The very moods a poet translates into words, I translate into tones that sound and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes."

  The open air. The wind off the water. The silence of the nights. Yes. The woods. Yes.

  I longed, suddenly, to be at the beach, to sit on the dock, to hear the ice crack in the river, to hear the trees rustle in the wind. Even in the cold, even in the snow, I would go-except that I knew only too well that the sounds of the night and the smell of the river had little to do with my desire. It was an excuse, a ruse. If even one other lonely soul walked the paths, I would be tempted. I would take whatever was offered.

  I set the book aside and went into the workroom. In this room, at least, all was tidy. My sketches for The River lay stacked in boxes. The boxes sat stacked in a corner. The surface of the card table I used for a desk was bare except for Tory's poems. The sheaf of onion skin paper lay in the center of the table.

  I found a packet of staff paper in one of the boxes. I sharpened a pencil. I opened Grieving Songs to "fuck." I sat down to work.

  Snapping a ruler down along the left side of a page I drew bar lines, divided the staves into systems. Piano, violin, voice.

  For some time I'd been thinking that, for "fuck," there was only one possible key. C-sharp minor. I scribbled the key signature-four sharps-onto each staff.

  I needed a halting, jagged time signature. Seven-eight. Each bar would contain seven eighth notes, grouped in fours and threes.

  Tory had suggested starting quietly. I liked the idea. I liked, also, the idea of starting low in another sense-setting the accompaniment low on the piano, anchored in the bass clef, both hands playing below middle C. The violin obbligato would start on the G string.

  To start, then. I stared at the nearly blank page. I wrote in a C-sharp minor chord, low on the piano. Too plain. I added a minor seventh. Next-in honor of Beethoven, in honor of the C-sharp minor quartet-I put in a Neapolitan sixth. For a few bars at least, the two chords would alternate-a club-footed, hobbling figure. I drew in the chords in fat half notes and slimmer dotted quarters.

  I hummed the jagged obbligato line I'd been carrying around with me for weeks. I scribbled and sketched. The violin argued with the piano, striking B-sharps against B-naturals, E-sharps against E-naturals.

  I looked at Tory's typescript. I hummed, then sang, the melody, transcribing as I went. The melody leapt and fell in awkward intervals.

  The song inched forward, measure by measure.

  "Fuck all of this," I sang. "Fuck life," I sang. "Fuck death."

  * * *

  In the morning, the phone woke me. It was Martin. "Bad news and worse news," he said. "Which would you like first?"

  I stared at the ceiling. I'd been dreaming, and though the dream had already faded, I had the sense that Martin had been in it-that the real-life Martin had interrupted the dream Martin mid-sentence.

  "Jonah? Are you there?"

  "I'm here. I'm trying to decide. Can you say them both at once?"

  He cleared his throat. "Bad news first, then. After the forum yesterday I had occasion to speak with Thorstensen. He told me he plans to fight for the abolishment of OWT. The phrases 'tooth and nail' and 'at all costs' were used."

  "And the worse news?"

  "Christa's been in a car accident." I sat on the edge of the bed, already reaching for the socks and sweater I'd cast off last night. "She called a few minutes ago. She called in 'broken.' 'Broken' instead of 'sick.' Can you imagine that?"

  "You talked to her? She's all right?"

  "She's in the hospital for observation. Saint Joseph's, downtown."

  I cradled the phone between my shoulder and chin. I snapped one of my socks in the air to turn it right side out. "And Peanut? Is Peanut-?" I swallowed hard. Had Christa told him about the baby?

  "What's this about a peanut?"

  I stopped. I kept very still. Maybe if I kept quite still, if I waited long enough, something would distract him-something shiny, some movement at the periphery of his vision.

  "Jonah," Martin said. "Peanut?"

  I said, "She never-? I can't believe she never-." I took a deep breath. "Christa's pr
egnant, Martin."

  "I see."

  "Like I said, I can't believe-."

  "No matter," he said. "Obviously I don't know anything about any peanut."

  "I won't be in until late morning or early afternoon. You know that, right?"

  "I assumed as much."

  * * *

  Christa had a room to herself. On the left side of the room an empty, stripped bed lay flat and low. Chairs crowded around it in a half circle. Gray light and a view of a concrete parking ramp filled a narrow window.

  Behind a curtain of rumpled blue cotton, Christa lay in a navel-high bed, in a nest of white sheets and beige blankets. A white plaster cast encased her right leg from the knee to the knuckles of her toes. Another window, same as the first, looked out on the same austere parking structure and the swath of pale, empty sky above it.

  She opened her eyes, looked at me dimly. Abruptly, though, she grinned and giggled. She wriggled the bare toes of her uninjured left foot.

  "Ayatollah Cockamamie," she said, and giggled again.

  "Exactly how high are you?" I said.

  She wrapped both hands around my forearm. "All they'll give me is codeine, the bastards." She relaxed, leaned back. "But still, it ain't bad."

  "What happened?"

  "I don't actually remember. I sort of remember. I'm a little foggy. I was turning left. Some guy plowed into me. Bastard."

  Her head dropped back onto the pillow. Her body seized and shook. Her mouth folded in on itself. I let her grip my fingers. I waited.

  "Drugs must be wearing off," she said. After a few deep breaths, she said, "They're keeping me because of Peanut. They want to make sure it's-." She covered her mouth with her hand. "Oops. I mean, they want to make sure he or she is okay."

  "Sensible, I suppose."

  She clasped my hand in both of hers. "Can you go to my place and pick up a few things?"

  "All the way to Hudson?"

  "My place, not my mother's. I'm not moving. My mother and I-."

  "You had a fight."

  She wagged a finger at me. "This is no time to say you told me so."

  "Don't be silly. This is the perfect time to tell you I told you so."

  "Can you go? Please? You'll be saving my life." She blinked limp-lashed cow eyes at me.

  "Let's make a list." I pantomimed writing on my hand. "Number one: mascara."

  "Bring me my glasses." She dropped her voice. "These idiots lost my contacts. Brand new gas-permeable hard lenses."

  "Where are they?"

  "I don't know. They lost them." I rolled my eyes. She said, "Oh. The glasses. In the bathroom, in the vanity. In a black case. And I need clothes. They had to cut my jeans off me. Freaking hundred-dollar jeans."

  "The bastards."

  "A nightgown, some underwear. Maybe a T-shirt? What they say about these hospital gowns is true." With a curled finger she beckoned me closer. In a stagy whisper, she said, "Completely bare in the back."

  "Don't knock it. I hear it's all the rage in Paris."

  "And something to read. Stat. I'm already dying of boredom." Clutching the sleeve of my jacket, she dragged me toward her. "I was thinking." Her eyes slid off to one side, toward an unplugged heart monitor. "Maybe-." She paused for so long that I thought she might have drifted into sleep.

  "Maybe what?"

  She looked at me. "Maybe I should move in with you," she said. "Don't look at me like that. I'm completely lucid."

  Completely lucid, I thought, was a stretch. She was giggling and saying "bastard" a lot-uncharacteristic habits, drug-induced, I was sure. Still, though she seemed foggy, she was more or less coherent.

  "I'm listening," I said.

  "You're struggling to make rent, right? And I need more room, right? It's perfect."

  "I think you're having a Sally Bowles moment," I said. I lifted her hand. I examined her fingernails, to see if it so happened that she'd painted them green.

  She yanked her hand back. "Think about it. I actually clean house." She nodded sagely. "I do dishes. I have houseplants. That's worth thinking about." She tried to wink, but didn't quite manage it.

  "Clean dishes and houseplants? That's a sweet deal, indeed."

  She sighed. "I'm serious."

  Behind me the door opened with a snick. A nurse in blue scrubs bustled in. She was a tiny woman, older than seemed quite safe for a nurse to be. Lines and folds crazed her face. She wore her hair in a lofty blue-rinsed bouffant.

  "Good morning," the nurse said, cheerful as daisies. According to a tag pinned to her breast, her name was Viola. She smiled, and her cheeks smoothed and plumped. "How are we feeling?"

  "Almost as if we got hit by a car," Christa said.

  "Keeping our sense of humor, I see. That's a good sign. We can have a pain med now if we'd like."

  "Excellent news," I said. "I'll take two."

  Viola shook her finger at me. "Naughty, naughty," she said.

  "I would dearly love a pain med," Christa said. She shifted her weight, slipped her hand into the small of her back. The bed creaked.

  "Back in a flash," Viola said.

  Once the nurse had gone, Christa said, "You're going crazy from loneliness. I can tell just by looking at you. That beard, my God. You look like you're about to invade Kuwait."

  "Weigh 'nough," I said, without much conviction.

  "I'll bet you haven't done laundry in weeks. If you can't even take five minutes to shave ?" She grimaced, kneaded her shoulder.

  "I did laundry just last-." Just last week, I was about to say, but that wasn't true. It had been a couple of weeks at least. I wasn't sure, exactly, how long it had been.

  "When was the last time you cleaned your bathroom or did dishes?"

  "I-."

  The nurse returned, carrying a tiny paper cup and a larger Styrofoam one. "Here we are," she sang.

  "Just in time," Christa said.

  Viola handed Christa the paper cup. Christa upended it over her open mouth, and two white tablets landed on her tongue. She washed them down with water from the Styrofoam cup.

  Viola, I thought. What if I used a viola obbligato instead of a violin obbligato? Dr. Benton had said once, in orchestration class, that a melody played high on a viola always sounded more intense, more urgent, than the same line played on a violin.

  "Thank you," Christa said, but the nurse had vanished.

  "She's swift for a centenarian," I said.

  Christa closed her eyes, exhaled, sank into her pillows. "Better already," she said. "Hard to believe. Maybe it's the placebo effect."

  "I should go," I told her. "I'll pick up your stuff and drop it off on my way to work."

  She opened her eyes. She peered at me, her eyes wide and watery. She said, "Think about what I said."

  "I will."

  At the door, I stopped, turned. "I nearly forgot," I said. "I-. I did something you're probably not going to like."

  "You told Martin about Peanut."

  My jaw dropped. "How did you-? How-?"

  "He called. Don't worry. I'm not mad." Propping herself on one elbow, she punched and fluffed her pillow with the other hand. "Plenty of time for that when the drugs wear off."

  I opened the door, then, again, I stopped. A janitor in khaki twill pushed a cart down the hall. One of the cart's wheels squeaked. I gritted my teeth.

  "There's one other thing-."

  "Gasbag wants us abolished," Christa said, her voice heavy and thick. "He told me that, too. Tooth and nail. At all costs."

  I sighed. "I guess there's no need to panic. It'll take a while. There's plenty of time before we-. He might not even-."

  I turned. She'd fallen asleep.

  * * *

  From a pay phone in the lobby I called Martin. "She's fine," I told him. "A broken leg and traumatic bluntness."

  Seconds passed. He said, "I don't know what that means. That doesn't sound very medical."

  "Never mind. She asked me to pick up some things from her apartment. After that,
I'll be in."

  "It's the twenty-second of December." He sighed. "I don't expect any of us will be much in demand. Do what you need to do."

  * * *

  I drove west on Summit Avenue with the first movement of the C-sharp minor quartet pouring into my right ear. Somber, portentous music for a gloomy, ill-fated day.

  Over time I had come to understand what McNamara had written-I had come to hear and feel the tension and suspense he'd described. My ear was not so refined that I could identify the Neapolitan harmonies McNamara had found so important, but even so, as I listened, I had the sense of-how had he put it?-massive forces marshaled and controlled. It was as if the entire movement existed only to keep the rest of the quartet at bay.

  Heaps of snow lined the curbs and boulevards, but the streets were dry. The slow-moving traffic and Beethoven's plaintive fugue drew me forward. Ever forward, and in the right direction, and yet I had the sense that with every spin of the tires, my destination grew farther away.

  * * *

  Christa's apartment was tucked away in a remote corner of the apartment complex, far removed from the street. For any visit lasting more than three minutes, I had learned, it was easiest and safest to park in the neighboring lot, behind the Lund's and the Carson-Pirie-Scott. I turned right at Ford Parkway, left at Finn. I drove to the back of the lot and parked at the end of a row of empty spaces. Hunched against the wind, I walked through a row of shrubs, across a strip of lawn, along the paved pathways, among the squat brick buildings.

  In summer, when ivy cloaked the walls and sheer drapes crowded the open windows, I sometimes stood on the sidewalk to hear the racket of televisions and stereos, to breathe the scents of fresh lemon and burned steak, to spy on these miniature worlds of mothers and sons, fathers and daughters.

  But now, in the bloodless morning light of the second-shortest day of the year, the ivy hung in brown and black shreds. The yellow-mullioned windows were sheets of hoarfrost. Girls in parkas and plaid skirts waited for a school bus, their laughter purling and plashing. Women in long robes waved their children from their doors.

  Christa's key burned my palm with cold. Slipping it into the lock, I gripped the curved brass handle with my other hand. Pull, turn, wiggle, push. In.

  Always in this place the sweetest of fragrances, some combination of lavender and apples and cedar. No wonder Tory had preferred Christa's three cramped rooms to his own gaunt, odorless palace.