The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [157]
She was transported to her backyard in Castle Shannon, except it was lush and manicured like a French garden, and as she stood on one of her old stages to sing, she saw Gina, John, her grandmother, Anna, and everyone else she had ever loved—and who had loved her in return—beaming up at her. She remembered what Anna had said to her after the fire about her gift, and Maria knew that it had happened just as Anna had predicted. It made her wonder where she would go now—what her island would look like in ten years—and how long she would have the strength or the desire to maintain it before—as would one day have to happen—she let it go. She felt a pang of sadness as she considered this—which was to say, a life without her voice—but as soon as she saw it, it was gone, and she felt none of the incapacitating detachment that had so often accompanied her memories of Pittsburgh. As she continued to sing, her voice trembled with revelation; she knew that by reconciling her past, she had done the same for her future.
She arrived at the last set of the lyrics, and as she repeated the word morning or, as it now occurred to her, mourning, she knew that, in the course of singing this simple song, her grief for Anna had opened a passage to this other grief, much deeper and unresolved, at least until now. A seagull passed overhead, and its shadow crossed her face before it disappeared into a speck on the horizon. As she watched it go, Maria filled the final notes of her song with hope and redemption, so sure was she of having found both.
44
La vraie douleur est incompatible avec l’espoir
NEW YORK CITY, 2002. Martin was tempted to laugh when he recognized what Maria was singing, particularly when he realized that Leo—who was standing beside him—did not. But he was far too entranced to do anything but listen; she sang it perfectly, transforming the droning and understated cheer of the original into a melancholy but serene lullaby. He was reminded of how his own musical tastes had changed over the years, from punk to hard core to indie to opera to—lately, in the wake of Beatrice—nothing at all. To hear Maria made him want to abandon this silent, grief-stricken phase—in fact, with the realization, it was already gone—and to resume the explorations that had marked so much of the past year. It had never occurred to him that music could be so much more than a sound track to his memories, that in addition to providing a means of transport, it could also steel him for what he might find and even deliver emotions that had once been beyond him to acknowledge. While Maria—and for that matter, Leo—had long alluded to possessing a faith in performance—and by extension music—Martin had always felt more agnostic. It now seemed he, too, held a certain belief that—as with any intuition—if you could figure out how to listen to these songs, they would take you to places you needed to go, even before you knew why, and once you were there might offer a few small threads of beauty—or even purpose—that on balance could make the difference between wanting to go on and wanting to disappear.
While the vast expanse of the horizon filled him with a certain fear of the unknown—his ability to breathe, it seemed, was also his ability to doubt—he took comfort in knowing that the past year had been valuable. It had changed him in ways he had hoped for, if not exactly anticipated; he was physically healthier—to the extent that his hands and feet no longer ached, and he could sleep through most nights—and less emotionally wounded, this all the more remarkable given that he had been largely oblivious to the condition. To know that he had confronted some of the most painful episodes of his past and survived gave him confidence; it wasn’t broad or far-reaching, certainly, but rather struck him as the opposite of the muted despair he now understood—underneath the more superficial measures of success—had marked so much of his life.
Many times in