Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [24]
Though we had been intimate for at least a week, I had still not seen her naked: like a good Victorian, she demanded that the shades be drawn, the lights be out, and the covers be pulled discreetly over us. But now, with the same methodical thoroughness, she wanted me to see her, so I looked, despite her warnings. She was bent over, under the tree boughs, the evening light breaking through the leaves and casting broken gold bands on her body. Her arms were delicate, the arms of a schoolgirl, I thought, an impression heightened by the paleness of her skin; but her breasts were full, at first making me think of Rubens’s women, then of Renoir’s, then of nothing at all. Slowly, knowing I was watching her, she pinned her hair up. Not her breasts or arms, but that expression of vague contentment as she looked out toward the water, away from me: that made me feel a tingling below my heart, somewhere in an emotional center near my stomach. I wanted to pick her up and carry her somewhere, but with my knees wobbly it was all I could do to make my way over to where she stood and take her in my arms before she cried out. “Jesus,” she said, shivering, “you gave me a surprise.” I kissed her, waiting for inspiration to direct me on what to do next: Pick her up? Carry her? Make love to her on the sand? Wade into the water with her and swim out to the center of the bay, where we would drown together in a Lawrentian love-grip? But then we broke the kiss; she put on her swimsuit like a good citizen, and we swam for the usual fifteen minutes in silence. Afterward, we changed back into our clothes and drove home, muttering small talk. Behavior inspired by and demonstrating love embarrassed both of us. When I told her that she was beautiful and that I loved her, she patted me on the cheek and said, “Aw, how nice. You always try to say the right thing.”
The Maple Street angle for Harmony of the World ran as follows: SYMPHONY OF FAITH IN A FAITHLESS AGE. Hindemith, I said, wished to confound the skeptics by composing a monument of faith. In an age of organized disharmony, of political chaos, he stood at the barricades defending tonality and traditional musical form. I carefully avoided any specific discussion of the musical materials of the symphony, which in the Schott orchestral score looked overcomplex and melodically ugly. From what I could tell from a sight-reading, Hindemith had employed stunning technique in order to disguise his lack of inspiration, though I did not say so in print. Instead, I wrote that the symphony’s failure to win public support was probably the result of Hindemith’s refusal to use musical gimmicks on the one hand and sticky-sweet melodies on the other. I wrote that he had not been dismayed by the bad reviews Harmony of the World (both the symphony and the opera) had received, which was untrue. I said he was a man of integrity. I did not say that men of integrity are often unable to express joy when the occasion demands. Cascadilla liked my article. “This guy sounds like me,” he said, reading my copy. “I respect him.” The article ran five days before the concert and was two pages away from the religion-and-faith section. Not long after, the symphony ticket office called me to say that my piece had caused a rush of ticket orders from ordinary folk, nonconcert types, who wanted to hear this “religious symphony.” The woman from the business office thanked me for my trouble. “Let’s hope they like it,” I said.
“Of course they will,” she assured me. “You’ve told them to.”
But they didn’t. Despite all the oratory in the symphony, it was as spiritually dead as a lampshade. I could see why Hindemith had been shocked by the public reaction. Our audience applauded politely in discouragement, and then I heard an unusual sound for this anonymous city: one man, full of fun and conviction, booing loudly from the balcony. Booing the harmony of the world! He must be a Satanist! Didn