Page 23 - Vol V. #8

loafing in cafés and exchanging looks again, which led us into an affair punctuated by argu- ments about the theory and practice of art, po- litical compromise, and duty, to the state and to oneself. Over the years since, I had run into her at parties, where we’d bantered merrily, L slipping in barbs to address any of my failings that she hadn’t been able to think of during our liaison.
On the back of the invitation, L had scrawled, “You MUST bring your genial child musicians to play our song. RSVP in the affirmative.”
L had only ever had two kinds of opinions on other artists’ work: silence or disdain, the latter often exercised in open letters in the state art magazine under the guise of a thirst for debate. “If you can’t see the superiority of my work,” she had addressed one cabal some years before, “then you are blind blind blind,” and they had gleefully dubbed themselves The Blind School. The glee was diminished, I suppose, when they all van- ished, almost overnight, along with any trace of their works.
L had always claimed to enjoy music. Whenever it reached the stage of passion, however, a violin- ist with his eyes shut tight, a pianist whose hair had shaken loose, a singer who reached for a high note and raised her arms, she would sneer, as if the pleasure should be for the listener only. As for the genius of my musicians, my termly concerts were well-attended and well-loathed events, as all parents received summonses much like the one in my hand. I quite understood why an audi- ence could not bear to sit through three hours of children playing music that sounded like works- in-progress.
L’s child attended the lower school attached to the Lyceum in which I worked. She was brought and collected each day by a nurse in a chauf- feured car. She was dark-eyed and scrawny, with thick black hair, and she brooded; in all those attributes, she was like me.
L believed that I had written our song for her. I hadn’t. That was just a lover’s lie. I had chosen
a piece from a collection of manuscripts I kept under lock and key at home, and had worked
it into a tune I called Quaintrelle’s Chorus. It
was in seven-eight, and the children’s clapping prompted my recall of its finer details. I had left it free of hair-loosening crescendos, any drama in it achieved by scatterings of augmented chords, and stategically-placed sevenths.
People whispered that our president had a share in the child, and that L was the president’s lover, then had to add hastily that he loved us all. It was L who had painted the portrait of our be- loved leader that hung in every workplace. What had appealed to him about it, people guessed, was that the eyes followed yours, and also that
Your answer?” Hermes had really had enough.
it made him look, somehow, both benign and unforgiving. L’s studio was on top of one wing of the presidential palace, surrounded by the rooms she called home. I read the title of her new work again, and had to restrain myself from gazing up at the portrait over my blackboard.
“Glasses?” He blinked defensively. “Yes. And your wings?”
“Wings? What do you mean?”
The children were clapping in seven-eight time, and I saw that our visitor was unsettled by it. It is cacophonous if there is even one child slightly out. There always is. I signalled for quiet. Hermes looked relieved until I told them to start again.
“You.” I looked urbane and worldly, I thought, in my three-piece linen suit, and my two-tone canvas shoes. And him in his serge, and his gabardine, and his stupid hat. “Hermes.”
“Tell Madam it will be a pleasure.” I walked him to the door. I said, “Where are your glasses?”
As he reached the door, he switched off the class-
room light. “It’s not time yet for the lights.” He wagged a finger at the clock. “Every gram of en-
(continued on next page)
14