“Then what’s it smell like?”
“Like rocks. Like an empty house with all the windows blowing open. Like thinking, like tears. Like November.”
“What about the tree?”
“It’s the part that goes on living.”
“… Are you cold?”
“No…. Here.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m never going to leave you, Kathleen.”
“Don’t ever leave me.”
“I never will.”
November 1, 1918
Caro Diario,
This is my swan song. It’s happened. I am too happy to write any more. There is one last event to record before I kiss and close you for ever. Today the Kaiser took me to the Metropolitan Opera House.
Custodian let us in. All is calm, all is dark, awaiting the opening night of the season on November 11. The custodian raised the gold curtain and I stood centre stage on the set of Samson and Delilah and looked into the house.
Beyond the pit, the dress circle and orchestra swept out before me, a varnished sea of gilded red rushing to the back and sides of the house to meet balcony upon balcony fanning up and around me like the decks of a grand sea-going vessel. Three thousand four hundred and sixty-five passengers, not counting the crew. This afternoon there was an audience of two. Rose and the Kaiser. Centre orchestra. I sang Quando m’envo from Bohème. And received a standing ovation. I’ll sing for Gatti-Casazza on the twelfth. I’ll make my debut on this stage this time next year. But I had my maiden voyage today.
O Diary. My loyal friend. There is love, there is music, there is no limit, there is work, there is the precious sense that this is the hour of grace when all things gather and distil to create the rest of my life. I don’t believe in God, I believe in everything. And I am amazed at how blessed I am. Thank you.
Love, Liebe, Amore,
Kathleen Cecilia Piper
Book 9. THE FAMILY TREE
“The sands of Mecca shape a rose”
THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD
The inscription in the stone archway says, “Ora Pro Nobis.” So Lily does, folding her hands on the diary in her lap and bowing her head.
She has been sitting here for the past hour reading in the doorway opposite 85 ½ 135th Street. She is glad after all that the mission lady found her because, although her dress and boots are worse for wear, Lily’s hair is clean and silky and her face is shining. Across the street, the church is still on the second floor, with four new stained-glass windows: the Holy Bible closed, the Holy Bible open, Jesus standing attended by sheep, Jesus sitting attended by sheep. The butcher shop is likewise there, renamed “Harlem’s Own Community Green Grocer and Butcher Shop,” but “Dash Daniels Harlem Gentlemen’s Emporium” has been replaced by “Joyce and Coralee’s Beauty Schooclass="underline" Bonaparte System,” the “A2Z Auto School,” “Renaissance Book Store,” “Johnson’s Photo Studio,” “Johnson’s Barber Shop” and “R.W. J. Johnson, Notary Public”.
There are nests like this everywhere of buildings richly subdivided, bursting with business and smart signage yet flanked by those boarded up and empty, “Danger Keep Out”. The survivors seem to be clinging to each other for warmth, hoping to avoid the next sweep of the scythe through a neighbourhood where at one time there seemed never to be enough space to house the dreams, the energy, the buzz of enterprise and thunderclaps of faith and music. More and more, Harlem depends on the tourist trade. The harder times get, the higher they get up here at a movable feast of dingy wang-dangs and a string of glittering clubs where genius enters by the back door.
Lily watches three little boys in fedoras and long coats gathered round a wooden crate playing a mysterious game. A woman dressed like some type of nun passes by and scowls at her, then does a double-take and says, “God bless you.” Little girls skip rope, there are children everywhere.
For a while now, the butcher has been leaning in his doorway across the street, considering Lily. He is a good-looking man of about thirty and he calls, “Are you waiting for someone?”
“No, sir.”
He smiles. “Who’s your momma, girl, where’s she at?”
Lily smiles back — not since Cape Breton has she heard words to that effect.
“She’s dead.”
He nods. “You hungry? You look hungry.”
“It’s all right, thank you, I’m expected.”
Lily rises, crosses the street and walks past him up the steps, through the stone archway and into the cool vaulted foyer. Up the stairs, her brace ringing out on the worn white marble. Second-floor church on the left. Lily pops her head in just to see what a Baptist church looks like. Three older ladies are cleaning and yakking, but stop dead when the oldest one looks up to see Lily’s head enquiring round the door and screams the way anyone would if the Devil showed up in church. The other two women cry, “Sweet Jesus!” “Dear Redeemer on the Cross!” — they would bless themselves but they’re not Catholic.
Lily withdraws, “Excuse me.”
The bravest lady steals over to the door and watches Lily climb towards the third floor. Then she turns to her cronies and explains, “That red-haired devil who ruined our Miss Rose has come back to life as a shrunk-down raggedy cripple.”
It’s true.
Third floor. Open doors, a gauntlet of staring faces, mostly children, an old young woman on the verge of barking out the usual interrogation till she sees it’s a lame girl. Hostility is replaced by curiosity. Lily makes her lopsided way in a wake of whispers and one giggle followed by the sound of a slap. Apartment Three. Lily knocks. And waits, turning to her audience, now silent. She smiles. The old young woman shoos the kids back into her apartment and slams the door. Lily knocks again. She knows there’s someone home, she can hear a piano — soft, one-handed, as though that hand had fallen asleep and were now dreaming.
She knocks a third time. And finally gets a muffled reply: “Fuck off.”
Lily puts her mouth to the crack of the door and formulates politely, “Miss Lacroix? It’s Lily Piper. I’ve come to visit you, and I have something for you.”
Silence.
Lily waits. It’s a long silence but far from empty. Finally the scrape of a chair. Slow, firm footfalls. A voice just on the other side of the door says, “There’s no Miss Lacroix here.”
Lily waits.
The door opens. A man looks down at her. His face is all angles, handsome and severe, he’s perhaps a bit too lean. Black hair shorn to the scalp, long neck, white shirt open at the throat. His baggy black trousers are worn to a shine, his impossibly articulated hands dangle, waiting to get back to their real life. But his eyes say he’s forgotten music for the moment.
Lily waits while he looks and looks. One of his hands rises and a finger touches Lily’s forehead — traces her eyelid, cheek, lips, chin. The man is crying. Lily asks, “May I come in?”
She enters when the man steps back. He closes the door behind her and she stands in the middle of the room looking round. There is a piano, a piano bench, one chair and a table. Lily turns back to the man and says, “Hello, Rose.”
Rose takes a half-step towards her. Lily approaches. Rose puts forth her hands, slowly fingering the air as though searching for something in a dark wardrobe. Lily enters the embrace. When Rose shakes and shudders, Lily does not let her stumble. While Rose grieves, Lily takes more and more weight — she has held people up before when they were stricken and besides, she is in good shape from her walk.