My first advantage: I have everything. My second advantage: this is just another island. My third advantage: I am bigger than it all.
March 2 — I took a walk in Central Park. I didn’t cry in front of Herr Kaiser. I didn’t sing in front of Herr Kaiser because he hates singers who sing, he claims to be Hungarian but I know he’s Fritzy, why hasn’t he been arrested, there’s supposed to be a war on.
Monday March 4 — I ate the most delicious thing today. A pretzel. It’s a baked thing tied in a knot. You eat it with mustard. Sounds unremarkable but is brilliant. Wrote pointless surprise theory exam for Kaiser.
Tuesday — Could someone please tell me what the point of “hissing” is? We have progressed, dear Diary! I am now forbidden, not only to sing, but to make any vocal sound whatsoever!
Wednesday — Museum of Natural History with Giles and fossilized lady friend Miss Morriss. Tea, then took me to see six girls doing modern dance in bedsheets swishing knives around. Maybe I should be a dancer. Take that back about Miss Morriss, they’re both so nice and I’m so bored.
Thursday — Kaiser crept up behind me and put his skeleton hands around my lower back ribs and said, “For the purposes of these lessons I must ask you to loosen or discard your corset.” Filthy bodechean.
Fri. March 8 — Wearing my hair loose like Lady Godiva to feel less naked with no corset. Excellent feeling, though strange, like I’m always ready for bed or swimming. Came all the way to Island of Manhattan just to shed outmoded undergarment.
Sat. — Got perfect on stupid fake theory exam. Killed him to admit that. “You have virtually perfect pitch, Miss Piper.” There’s no “virtually” about it and he knows it. Asked him when I could sing again. He said, “As far as I can tell, Miss Piper, you have never sung in your life.”
Sun. — Giles asked if I wanted to come sightseeing. No. Thank you. Monday, March 11, Eighth Ave elevated train, squashed like sardine — “That which does not kill me, only makes me stronger.”
tues. — My lower back is always aching. I have not cried, I’m past that, I’m numb, but I have almost fainted. “Nein,” he says. “Start again. Inhale, ja, und….” And then I “hiss”.
Wed. — Oh joy! Today I got to make a sound! With my mouth closed. I have no idea what he’s talking about most of the time and it isn’t the language barrier: “Think that you must hold a boiled egg in the back of your throat.” With or without the shell? Halfway through the lesson, as I was making a feeble little humming sound with my mouth closed, with my tongue in the “n” position, while I was trying “to put a smile into the sound,” he said, “That’s it.” Apparently he has found the true placement of my voice. On the rear shelf of a disused library.
? — I wonder if anyone has ever committed suicide out of sheer boredom? Today I was permitted to open my mouth ever so slightly and release the faintest of “ee’s”. Then he told me to put an “ae” inside the “ee”. “Ah” and “oo” come after but he wouldn’t let me finish — he informed me that I had run out of air. I said I had plenty of air left and he told me that perhaps I had air enough to sustain life, but not the note. I have to learn to sing “on the breath,” he said. Give me strength!
Giles just called me for supper. Everything she cooks is white or light brown. Except the boiled greens, which are grey. She said, in this voice that reminds me of dust on a doily, “Before you know it you’ll have lots of friends and it will seem like a different city.” I don’t want friends, I didn’t come here to make friends. She’s nice, though. Why can’t I just be grateful that there’s at least someone who speaks kindly to me. Sometimes, though, she gives me a bit of the creeps. She’ll look at me like she knows something and then she’ll say something completely innocuous. This whole apartment reeks of lavender, there are lace curtains and praying hands everywhere. It’s all like a fading photograph except for me. I keep seeing myself whirling around, breaking everything without even touching it, it makes me want to talk louder, breathe deeper, commit carnal acts!
I look at myself naked. Yes, this is my confession. In the full-length mirror in the armoire in my room. I look at myself just to remind myself that I’m there. No, I look because I like to look and that’s how I know it’s wrong. But how could it be? I feel an ache. I want someone to see me and touch me before I’m old. Before it wrinkles and fades and falls, I can’t believe that will ever happen to me.
14th — Intervals of seconds. Up and down and up and down and up and down and lasciatemi morir
15th — spent a month’s carfare on a new dress — pale green silk chiffon, très chic, très moderne, I look about twenty-five. I have no place to wear it.
16th — Intervals of thirds
Sunday, March 17 — No lesson today, no torture chamber. Also, I didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to WALK there on time owing to the fact that I squandered a small fortune on that stupid dress I’ll never wear. But oubliez all that! I am happy as a clam because I’m in Central Park all on my own, it’s sunny, life is long, I have all the time in the world and I will sing. He has put my voice into a sad solitary cell but she will fly. I know because I can feel her beating, getting stronger the longer she is silent. Could it be that the Kaiser’s training is working? Or is it possible my voice is thriving on adversity? That is the perverse unbreakable Piper spirit. Thank you Daddy.
There is a couple “spooning” in broad daylight not three steps away from me in full view of a nanny and a six-year-old girl with a face full of freckles who keeps grinning at me — reminds me of Frances. Little imp just whipped her rubber ball at me, it bounced off the bench, now it’s landed in the pond.
Fished the ball out, played like an idiot with her for the next hour and a half much to Nanny’s relief.
après diner: — Because this is my diary, I will ask this question: Do you think Giles has ever been impure in thought and deed? Why do I have to think that about a perfectly innocent old lady?! But no one is perfectly innocent. A good singer knows that. I am terrible. I don’t care. I want to make love with my voice to three thousand four hundred and sixty-five people at a time.
Tues. 19 — I have been exiled to the mezza di voce. Il passaggio. He calls it “the no man’s land of the voice”. It is another of his sadistic techniques. I am being held prisoner an octave and a half above middle C between E and G.