Читать книгу After You've Gone - Jeffrey Lent - Страница 7

If love had a language, he’d realized it would be this, not words or gestures but the mellifluous richness he’d heard that summer evening, anchored between the pair of violins and the bass. The musician seated with his cello tucked between his knees, bent in concentration and intensity of focus that swept and fled, stroked and drew upon man, instrument and bow.

Henry recalled the warm room, an upper story of the Civic Club and how he’d sat next to Olivia, their moist hands clamped as if she knew his unease. During his years at Brown and then Yale he’d had opportunities to hear music performed and dismissed those out of hand. He was otherwise busy, and music was for him an unfathomable abstract for other people. So it was in Elmira the summer of 1891, soon after their marriage, that his introduction came. He remembered this string quartet, not gifted amateurs but dispatched from somewhere to here, by unknown hands and purse strings. The program a mystery, but for all the ample virtuosity of the two violin players, the settled heart-rhythm of the bass, what flowed out to him that evening was the lovely dulcet balance, as pure as the hand in his, of the cello.

The essence of life; those long drawn notes or swift arpeggios of that love both ardent and calm beside him. He was transported.

In the pale green evening—the day lengthening in a slowed leveling toward its inevitable night—he and Olivia had left the reception and strolled hand in hand along the height of land above the valley of the Chemung, the grand homes of her childhood, the summer shade of big elms and sycamores and shagbarks cooling them. Walking toward their own modest pleasant first home, only two streets down and a bit to the west, closer to the campus, he stumbled over a sudden realization. And was as quickly shy.

“Olivia.”

“Yes?”

“Your piano.” Referring to the handsome parlor upright that had been moved into the house following their wedding, along with other bequeathed furniture. He’d considered it somewhat like the array of paintings on the walls and potted plants to be only another fixture of this new life.

“Yes?” And heard her own shyness.

“You do play it, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve never heard you.”

She was quiet a bit as they strolled and then said, “You never asked.”

“So when do you play?”

“During the day.” She paused again and said, “Not as often as I used to.”

He knew not to ask why. He said, “Would you play for me?”

“Would you like that?”

“Certainly. Very much.”

“I’d thought perhaps you didn’t care for it. Since you never mentioned it.”

And he had the great gift of young love, to entrust fully and so be trusted and was not wise but passionate when he responded, “I’ve never truly heard music until this afternoon. And I so do want to hear you.”

“Oh.” She was alarmed. “I’m very poor compared to those musicians.”

He stopped her and swiftly kissed her, careless of passersby. She was blushing when he stepped forth and offered his arm and said, “Everything about you is beyond compare.”

So he first sat and listened to her and then as both she and he became more confident and he understood better what she was doing he stood alongside her bench and although his ability to read music was limited to his early training for singing in church he soon was able to turn the pages for her as she worked her way through a much larger repertoire for piano than he’d expected. Not only the popular parlor songs, some few of which she sang in a strong rolling voice, but also not uncomplicated works of Beethoven, Chopin, and Schumann. And so music filled their house in evenings and her flush of pride met his own in this accomplishment and while she played he would rest one hand against the small of her back as he loomed gentle, her page-turner, her husband and lover.