How can a person look into her own face and consent to be banished from it? For Lily, Frances is as first and familiar as the sky, as the palm of her own hand. The freckle on the nose, the green jewels in the eyes, the smart mouth, what does it mean to be banished from the face that first looked you into existence?
“I don’t want to leave you.”
Lily’s forehead buckles but Frances insists, “You have to go, little gingerbread boy, ‘run away and whatever you do, don’t look back.’”
“This isn’t a story, Frances.” Anger ignites Lily’s grief.
“Yes it is, Lily. Hayola kellu bas Helm.”
“It is not!”
“Taa’i la hown, Habibti —”
“No!”
“Te’berini.”
“Stop it!”
Frances reaches for Lily, but Lily flies into a rage, beating off the embrace until she forgets that Frances is not a book, or a porcelain figurine. Frances doesn’t move except to protect her face and breasts while Lily exhausts herself.
When Lily crumples finally, the undertow gets ahold of her face and contorts it into a grieving clown. The same tide distends her voice, “I don’t want to leave you, Fra-anc-ees.” The corners of Lily’s mouth run with clear saliva, she is incapable of closing her mouth or of taking the next breath. Frances touches Lily’s fist, unlocking her throat. The air pours scraping in, and corrosive sobs begin.
“Come here, Lily.”
Frances opens her nightgown and guides Lily’s mouth to drink.
Shortly before dawn, Lily kneels before the open hope chest for the second time that night. She reaches deep down and withdraws a soft bundle wrapped in white tissue-paper. She lifts out a beautiful flowing dress of pale green silk. Then picks up the notebook that has fallen from its folds. Holy Angels Convent School.
Ten minutes later, the shed door opens and Lily walks in. It is not necessary to search, for there it is. Daddy’s project. Finished. They are still mounted on the lasts. Two bright red boots. The small one, perched on its built-up sole, smiles out at her as does its big brother. Lily removes the new boots from their iron feet. She pulls them on, harnessing with care the left boot for its first taste of the bit. She wraps her ankles in the money Frances gave her, pulls tight the candy-cane laces and stands up. Calf leather. They enfold her feet like a second skin, no need to break them in. They go nicely with her beautiful new green silk dress — a little big for her, to be sure, and missing a sash as you can see from the empty belt loops, but lovely all the same. With her notebook under her arm, Lily leaves the shed.
The air is cool and moist with a hint of salt. The night is turning grey. It’s the best time to see this town — the collieries, the tracks, the coal carts and company houses look best in the pewter dawn, likewise the ocean and the rocky shore. Farewell. Lily feels refreshed. As though she could walk for ever. Farewell to Nova Scotia. She closes the door behind her, and heads for the Shore Road. She looks back once. And keeps walking.
Book 8
HEJIRA
8 pm, February 29, 1918, New York City
Dear Diary,
No, I will not use that form of address. That is a relic of childhood. This book will serve as a record of my progress as a singer. I will record only relevant facts which will prove useful as my training progresses. No gush. Let other girls record their crushes and their dresses, their tresses and trousseaux. I am here to work. I will note scientifically everything I learn as in a lab book. I will be objective and unflinchingly self-critical. I will not be distracted by the bustle of this city. And in this, my record book, I will not allow emotion to colour my perceptions.
1:12 am — I am burning. I have to live, I have to sing, I want to transform myself into a thousand different characters and carry their life with me onto the stage where it’s so bright and so dark at the same time, just knowing there are three thousand people out there longing to be swept away by the passion that’s about to flood out from scarlet curtains, to this I consecrate my body and my soul, I can give no more than all of myself, I feel my heart is a throbbing engine and my voice is the valve, like a wailing train, it has to sing or blow up, there’s too much fuel, too much fire, and what am I to do with this voice if I can’t let it out, it’s not just singing. I am here as a speck, but I don’t feel scared or about to be blown away, I feel like all New York is a warm embrace just waiting to enfold me. I am in love. But not with a person. I am passionately in love with my life.
Friday March 1, 1918 — My voice teacher is someone I will simply call Herr Blutwurst. He is rude and, if my first lesson is any indication, utterly devoid of qualifications. I can only conclude he is a fraud. I will give him to week’s end. He is a dry stick of a person. I feel dust in my throat just thinking about him. I was perfectly polite. He looked me over as though he were buying a horse. He has a horrible accent. He ordered me to “zing zomesink.” I did, and he got an expression on his face as though he’d just et a bad oyster. Why did it ever even occur to this man to enter any field remotely connected to music since he obviously hates music? He said, after I had sung my Quanto affetto, “Vee haf a lot off verk to do.” I should have said, “Ich weiss das, Käsekopf, das ist warum Ich hier bin.” He wants me to cry but I won’t, my daddy just finished killing a lot of his countrymen.
My first advantage: I have everything. My second advantage: this is just another island. My third advantage: I am bigger than it all.
March 2 — I took a walk in Central Park. I didn’t cry in front of Herr Kaiser. I didn’t sing in front of Herr Kaiser because he hates singers who sing, he claims to be Hungarian but I know he’s Fritzy, why hasn’t he been arrested, there’s supposed to be a war on.
Monday March 4 — I ate the most delicious thing today. A pretzel. It’s a baked thing tied in a knot. You eat it with mustard. Sounds unremarkable but is brilliant. Wrote pointless surprise theory exam for Kaiser.
Tuesday — Could someone please tell me what the point of “hissing” is? We have progressed, dear Diary! I am now forbidden, not only to sing, but to make any vocal sound whatsoever!
Wednesday — Museum of Natural History with Giles and fossilized lady friend Miss Morriss. Tea, then took me to see six girls doing modern dance in bedsheets swishing knives around. Maybe I should be a dancer. Take that back about Miss Morriss, they’re both so nice and I’m so bored.
Thursday — Kaiser crept up behind me and put his skeleton hands around my lower back ribs and said, “For the purposes of these lessons I must ask you to loosen or discard your corset.” Filthy bodechean.
Fri. March 8 — Wearing my hair loose like Lady Godiva to feel less naked with no corset. Excellent feeling, though strange, like I’m always ready for bed or swimming. Came all the way to Island of Manhattan just to shed outmoded undergarment.
Sat. — Got perfect on stupid fake theory exam. Killed him to admit that. “You have virtually perfect pitch, Miss Piper.” There’s no “virtually” about it and he knows it. Asked him when I could sing again. He said, “As far as I can tell, Miss Piper, you have never sung in your life.”
Sun. — Giles asked if I wanted to come sightseeing. No. Thank you. Monday, March 11, Eighth Ave elevated train, squashed like sardine — “That which does not kill me, only makes me stronger.”
tues. — My lower back is always aching. I have not cried, I’m past that, I’m numb, but I have almost fainted. “Nein,” he says. “Start again. Inhale, ja, und….” And then I “hiss”.
Wed. — Oh joy! Today I got to make a sound! With my mouth closed. I have no idea what he’s talking about most of the time and it isn’t the language barrier: “Think that you must hold a boiled egg in the back of your throat.” With or without the shell? Halfway through the lesson, as I was making a feeble little humming sound with my mouth closed, with my tongue in the “n” position, while I was trying “to put a smile into the sound,” he said, “That’s it.” Apparently he has found the true placement of my voice. On the rear shelf of a dis
used library.
? — I wonder if anyone has ever committed suicide out of sheer boredom? Today I was permitted to open my mouth ever so slightly and release the faintest of “ee’s”. Then he told me to put an “ae” inside the “ee”. “Ah” and “oo” come after but he wouldn’t let me finish — he informed me that I had run out of air. I said I had plenty of air left and he told me that perhaps I had air enough to sustain life, but not the note. I have to learn to sing “on the breath,” he said. Give me strength!
Giles just called me for supper. Everything she cooks is white or light brown. Except the boiled greens, which are grey. She said, in this voice that reminds me of dust on a doily, “Before you know it you’ll have lots of friends and it will seem like a different city.” I don’t want friends, I didn’t come here to make friends. She’s nice, though. Why can’t I just be grateful that there’s at least someone who speaks kindly to me. Sometimes, though, she gives me a bit of the creeps. She’ll look at me like she knows something and then she’ll say something completely innocuous. This whole apartment reeks of lavender, there are lace curtains and praying hands everywhere. It’s all like a fading photograph except for me. I keep seeing myself whirling around, breaking everything without even touching it, it makes me want to talk louder, breathe deeper, commit carnal acts!
I look at myself naked. Yes, this is my confession. In the full-length mirror in the armoire in my room. I look at myself just to remind myself that I’m there. No, I look because I like to look and that’s how I know it’s wrong. But how could it be? I feel an ache. I want someone to see me and touch me before I’m old. Before it wrinkles and fades and falls, I can’t believe that will ever happen to me.
14th — Intervals of seconds. Up and down and up and down and up and down and lasciatemi morir
15th — spent a month’s carfare on a new dress — pale green silk chiffon, très chic, très moderne, I look about twenty-five. I have no place to wear it.
16th — Intervals of thirds
Sunday, March 17 — No lesson today, no torture chamber. Also, I didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to WALK there on time owing to the fact that I squandered a small fortune on that stupid dress I’ll never wear. But oubliez all that! I am happy as a clam because I’m in Central Park all on my own, it’s sunny, life is long, I have all the time in the world and I will sing. He has put my voice into a sad solitary cell but she will fly. I know because I can feel her beating, getting stronger the longer she is silent. Could it be that the Kaiser’s training is working? Or is it possible my voice is thriving on adversity? That is the perverse unbreakable Piper spirit. Thank you Daddy.
There is a couple “spooning” in broad daylight not three steps away from me in full view of a nanny and a six-year-old girl with a face full of freckles who keeps grinning at me — reminds me of Frances. Little imp just whipped her rubber ball at me, it bounced off the bench, now it’s landed in the pond.
Fished the ball out, played like an idiot with her for the next hour and a half much to Nanny’s relief.
après diner: — Because this is my diary, I will ask this question: Do you think Giles has ever been impure in thought and deed? Why do I have to think that about a perfectly innocent old lady?! But no one is perfectly innocent. A good singer knows that. I am terrible. I don’t care. I want to make love with my voice to three thousand four hundred and sixty-five people at a time.
Tues. 19 — I have been exiled to the mezza di voce. Il passaggio. He calls it “the no man’s land of the voice”. It is another of his sadistic techniques. I am being held prisoner an octave and a half above middle C between E and G.
Wed. 20 — He wants to ruin my voice.
Fri. — Il passaggio is abandoned. Il passaggio is all but silent.
Il passaggio is another word for limbo.
sat. — I was late this morning. Couldn’t get to sleep last night and couldn’t wake up this morning. Herr K worse than usual as a result.
Monday March 25 — It seems Il passaggio is inhabited after all. Haunted is more like it. Full of ghostly sighs and groans.
2:00 am — I dreamt of Pete. He was wearing Mumma’s apron and Daddy’s pit boots and he was crying and wanting me to hug him. There is no such thing. The lights are on now. No such thing as Pete.
I want to go home. I want to see my daddy.
Kathleen, grow up.
3:30 am — don’t write it down
I can’t stop crying.
What if there’s someone outside my door?
Oh God. If I think about it, my door will open.
“Let nothing disturb you; nothing frighten you. All things are passing.” Saint Teresa, ora pro nobis.
thurs. 28 — Giles made me drink a special tea so I could sleep last night. It worked. Has she been spying on me?
fri. — One heck of a middle C today. Felt like I was gorging on a chocolate éclair. Kaiser none too pleased — after all, I’m a soprano. Sopranos don’t sing in chocolate.
sat. — Today I cried. he told me to sing the C-major scale, my first time allowed to put more than two notes together at a time. But still no consonants, just “ah”. I felt like I was climbing stone steps in the dark and when I got a glimpse of light towards the top I started crying but I finished the ruddy scale.
APRIL FOOL’S DAY — Today Herr Knibs gives me that bloodless vulture eye and — no, he’s more amphibian, he’s probably covered in dry scales (scales, ha ha!) from collar to cuffs and dines furtively on furry creatures thrice daily. I can just see the squirming lump making its way down his narrow throat. Does he regurgitate bones every evening? Well today he says to me, “I vill accept you as a shtudent, Miss Pipah.” Why didn’t I say the perfect icy thing? I said — and I am being completely honest here, so I’ll tell you — I said, “Thank you, sir.” May I be struck dead.
Wed. — Daddy sent me a book today and Mercedes and Frances sent me salt-water taffy! I never thought I’d miss my little elves so much. I wish Daddy would put them in a special crate and mail them to me like kittens for a day or two.
Thurs. — “La voix mixte”: In every head tone, the resonance of the chest. In every chest tone, the rarity of the head. Ascend directly to heaven.
Fri. — Giles asked me to sing something for her this afternoon and I had to say, “I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to sing anything but scales and arpeggios.” The Kaiser says he can tell if I’ve been singing “ditties” on the sly. It’s like I’m committing adultery with my voice or something, he’s disgusting.
Mon. — He’s making me wear my hair in a scalp-tight bun. What does he think I am, a ballerina?
Tues. — I have had an epiphany. I now know what people mean when they say you have to suffer for your art. I always thought they meant rehearsing till you drop, performing when you’re not in the mood, starving until you get discovered and I always thought, “Great, I can’t wait to suffer” but that’s not it at all. The real suffering is this teacher trying to kill me with boredom by marching me up and down every scale known to man. Fine. I will beat him at his own game. I have begun repeating the entire morning’s lesson three times every day.
Wed. — “Your vocal range is a freak of nature, Miss Piper, no more or less impressive than Mount Everest. It remains to be seen whether or not you have the stamina and skill to scale it.” Scale!
Thurs. — I love the buildings. They’re called skyscrapers. They’re the closest thing to an ocean here. But it’s an ocean that goes straight up, not flat out. They say that the body of water stretching away to the east of Manhattan is the ocean but it isn’t. Not my ocean, anyway. It’s weird because back home I just took it for granted, my grey-green sea. Now I have a granite ocean. It gives me the same happy-sad feeling I need sometimes. When I look straight up at the buildings I can feel alone in a good way. Not in that horrible way of no one knows me.
fri — This is not a city. This is a world with whole countries in it. You could go mad here if you were the type of person who thought you
were sane in the first place. I have found something past the granite ocean. It’s a whole amazing world. You can walk for an hour and never hear a word of English, you can eat in five different countries in five blocks, you can hear music everywhere. Why am I studying, why do I want to be caged on a stage when the real singers are out here, singing about fish, hollering out rhythm across wheelbarrows full of fruit to the timpany of tin pan alley, a chorus of trams, horseshoes, knives and live animals, this is where the opera is. The Met is a mausoleum. The music room is a funeral parlour. God I don’t want to wind up in a museum.
Mon. — There are places in Central Park that are better left unexplored and I won’t scandalize you by telling you why.
Tues. April 16 — Coney Island! Ate only pink things. Threw up. It was worth it.
Wednesday — Start at the South St. docks. Halifax times twenty. They better hope it never blows up. I see horses being winched up by their bellies in slings onto ships. They’ve been conscripted. That’s what most of the ships are for. New York feeds the war. New York goes to the whole world and the whole world comes to New York. I love seeing huge crates with Chinese writing swing through the air and pile up on the dock alongside every other language known to man. I’d like to spend a whole day just watching the men and the cargo but I can’t linger too long ’cause of all the tough customers wondering what a nice girl like me is doing… etc. What would they do if I said, “Hey pal, I think you’re beautiful, you move like Nijinsky, you’re my idea of a Greek god, in overalls.” But I’m not allowed to say anything at all because they’d think I was asking for it. Men get to chat to strangers and learn all kinds of things. Women get to take a book out of the library. When I am a famous singer, I will talk to whomever I please.
On foot up through the Bowery, the Italian quarter — kids, carts, food, women in black, good-looking guys but don’t let them see you looking, opera verismo — Greenwich Village, ladies and gentlemen, Tenderloin — get hungry here, buy a pretzel, have lunch in Hell’s Kitchen — really! Why do they call it that? Seems perfectly nice, in fact you can have a free lunch at Devlin’s Saloon Bar. It’s true, a sign said “Ladies Entrance” so I entered and there were a whole bunch of women with red faces and gristly elbows and all you have to do is pay a nickel for a beer that comes with a hot heaping plate. Up Broadway a bit tipsy — not used to beer — the golden mile, Union Square, Madison Square, Herald Square, past the Met — genuflect — promenade through Times Square, Columbus Circle, buy popcorn for the pigeons to keep them in the statue business (where they perform a valuable civic service by keeping the glorious past in perspective), into the Park, zigzag through that immense chunk of countryside smack in the middle of the greatest show on earth, past the Pond, the Lake, the Castle, skip the Reservoir it’s too big and too small, promise to go to the Metropolitan Museum next time, Haarlem Meer (sit down and decide I’ve walked far enough), out onto Central Park North, up Lenox thirty-seven blocks to the Haarlem River. It’s night.