American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [52]
His mind swung. He was leading the beat in his head with the percussion of his heart. His head and his heart were no match for time. He had been swept up in the music and now the music had swept him aside. He was just someone in the midst of the music of history. History conducted by a bandleader. History, conducting life.
But what was so historical about his problem? It was a timeless dilemma, no specific circumstances had given rise to it, just romance and passion and stupidity. He didn’t care about seeing himself as important or unimportant, but suddenly it occurred to him that if there hadn’t been a Depression he wouldn’t have been playing on ships, if he hadn’t been playing on ships he wouldn’t have met Vivian on the dock, if he hadn’t met Vivian … But this was such shallow, faulty reasoning that he nearly laughed into the wind. No, his problem was simply his. Still, there was the music, the current of which had carried him here. And there was a moment in time that had given rise to that music, a moment and a music that had seemed so isolated from history. No one thought about the fact that swing music really started in Constantinople at a time of great cosmopolitanism and cultural exchange. No one thought that what seemed so American had come from an Armenian alchemist in seventeenth-century Turkey. Only Vivian was smart enough to think about something like that. Thinking about it now made him suspect that although his problems seemed exclusively his, perhaps they did go further back than he could imagine. What he didn’t consider was how far forward they might travel. That they might reverberate through time like the sound of cymbals across a dance hall, that he did not contemplate.
The wind stirred up the river. There were whitecaps today, streaks of white like dashes across the blue, making a moving poetry out on the water. He wondered what Vivian would have said about that. He thought about her, scared and burdened and feeling alone in the dim house with the heavy rugs. He thought about Pearl, hopeful for the sixth time. He thought about what a spectacular mess he had made. He thought that maybe finally he was going to have a child. Or two. What this kind of beginning would lead to he had no idea. What kind of person or people would thrive or wither from such an origin as this he had no idea. He couldn’t read the future. He felt ashamed at the way this unborn child’s life had begun and nevertheless proud that if his actions were going to ride on the waves of the future that they would ride in the form of life. Life, he figured, had been riding these waves for centuries and would always find some kind of rhythm. No, there was no way to hold on to time. He would just throw it up in the air like a smiling baby. He would swing it in his arms.
2005
I never liked him, Honor said.
He’s a prick, Milo said, but I feel for him. He doesn’t know any better.
He should.
She pushed some hair out of her face with the back of her hand.
This doesn’t sound like you. You’re usually so forgiving.
She had finished on his back and she was looking at nowhere. He sat up.
What is it? he said.
I don’t feel for him, she said. Something’s changed. I don’t feel like I have to forgive everyone. He should know better. He’s ruining lives, she said.
He’s not killing anyone, Milo said.
We don’t know that. And killing isn’t the only way to ruin lives.
No, but it’s a good one, he said.
He got down from the table and started to put on his shirt.
He was supposed to be moving out soon. He was walking. He was ready, they said. She was helping him find a place to live. He would need to stay nearby for a while to keep up his rehabilitation, so he could not go back yet to Maine. She was happy. He would stay close. They didn’t talk about it, but it was clear that they would stay close.
When he finished getting dressed and she was ready to go, he held the door for her and they walked down the hall together.
1969
When she was rummaging around the apartment she found the photograph. It was under the table on top of a pile of papers. Iris