The Best American Short Stories 2014 (39 page)

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 you 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.

“I will find a suitable teacher to help you,” I said.

I could hear her sobbing as I walked down the stairs, and as I walked out through the courtyard, that mournful sound carried from the open window. I tried to remember it, for I knew it would be the last I would hear that voice.

In my mind our lessons continue and I retrace every word and note and color of the voice, every dear ornament that rose naturally from her throat. I go back to the note, to recall its pitch and its perfection. Or sometimes in dreams the note comes to me, when through the open window a bird will trill and it lasts for what seems like an hour and then she rushes to me, and I wake to find that I can no longer stand or raise my hand to feed myself, and I remember.

I found that day a young minnesinger as dark as my dear student, and handsome, with good teeth and a good position. I sent him to her as a teacher, knowing full well what would happen. The note would sound, and the same feeling would well up in her heart; she would throw her little arms around this young man, and he would be free to respond. I do not know that this happened, of course. But it is written that jealousy is cruel as the grave, and that its flashes are flashes of fire. Over the bridge and crossing home I cried out in rage and frustration; at home my wife lay in her white garments, still weak though she had begun taking food. I told her I would be with her.

“You shall not, John,” she responded, still softly. And still full of that cloying gentleness, she petted my head, cooing at me and speaking as if I were a small child. “You know what you have vowed.”

Heretofore I had accepted my marriage on her terms, and on her father's. I was deformed, and fortunate for such a dowry. Yet in that moment my wife seemed a humbug in her wailing and prediction and prophecy, and I forgot the sympathy I had for her.

“You have tricked me,” I said. “Saint Paul wrote that the husband must render his wife what is due her, and the wife her husband.”