He took the stairs two at a time and dragged her up by an arm. Herded her down to the kitchen, whinging and whining every step of the way.
“Thank you, missus, my wife’ll take over now.”
Mrs Luvovitz got up, thinking thoughts not in English, and left the house.
James plunked his wife onto the chair and put the screeching baby into her arms. “Now feed her.”
But the mother just blubbered and babbled.
“Speak English, for Christ’s sake.”
“Ma bi’der. Biwajeaal.”
He slapped her. “If she doesn’t eat, you don’t eat. Understood?”
Materia nodded. He unbuttoned her blouse.
James allowed Mrs Luvovitz over that evening when Materia hadn’t produced a drop and the baby was fit to be tied. The women went upstairs. The howling the mother put up, as Mrs Luvovitz did the necessary. Downstairs in the front room, James unlocked the piano and played the opening bars of various pieces from memory in an effort to drown the sound. He’d have to invest in some sheet music and exercise books. His daughter would play.
In a few days the pump was primed and the baby was sucking. But the mother cried through every feeding. One evening in the fourth week of Kathleen’s life, James snatched his child from the breast in horror.
“You’ve hurt her, Jesus Christ, you’ve cut her lip!” — for the baby’s smile was bright with blood.
Materia just sat there, mute as usual, her dress open, her nipples cracked and bleeding, oozing milk.
James took one look and realized that the child would have to be weaned before it was poisoned.
James might be a Catholic convert, but he’d never forgotten his Scots Confession. Feckless Catholics believe in salvation through faith — good enough, sit on your arse and believe all you like, but some of us know that work is the only sure bet, for the night will come, etc., etc…. get on with it, nothing will come of nothing.
Within a month, James had enough students from Sydney to Glace Bay to start making ends meet. All day into the evening, every good boy deserves fudge and all cows eat grass. And at night, the staring zombie he’d married. Why had he married her? It was when he sat next to twelve- and thirteen-year-olds on the piano bench and watched their eyes glaze over at the mention of middle C that it hit him in the stomach that his wife had been no older than they.
How had he been ensnared by a child? There was something not right about Materia. Normal children didn’t run away with men. He knew from his reading that clinical simpletons necessarily had an overdeveloped animal nature. She had seduced him. That was why he hadn’t noticed she was a child. Because she wasn’t one. Not a real one. It was queer. Sick, even. Perhaps it was a racial flaw. He would read up on it.
All Materia wanted to do was get pregnant again so God could send her a son. But there wasn’t much chance of that because her husband wouldn’t come near her. Got angry if she touched him. Materia realized that God would not give her another baby if He saw she was ungrateful for the one she had. So she prayed to the Blessed Virgin. She prayed in the attic because there was no church for miles and miles, and James didn’t like her wandering any more. On her knees, elbows resting on the hope chest, “Please dear Mary Mother of God, make me love my baby.”
Kathleen thrived. Silky red-gold hair, green eyes and white white skin. Materia wondered where she’d come from. Surely she had been changed in the night. Mrs Luvovitz didn’t care to speculate.
James watched Kathleen grow more beautiful and hardy every day. And what a set of pipes — he’d carry her out to the stony fields for yelling contests. They’d holler till they were hoarse and hilarious. He loved to hear her laugh. She could do no wrong.
Feeding the child some lovely mush at the kitchen table, Materia leaned forward and cooed, “Ya Helwi. Ya albi, ya Amar. Te’berini.”
The child smiled and Materia said a silent prayer of thanks, because at that moment she’d felt a faint breath of something not far from love.
“Don’t do that, Materia.”
“What?”
“I don’t want her growing up confused. Speak English.”
“Okay.”
A Miner ’Forty-Niner
Kathleen sang before she talked. Perfect pitch. James was a piano tuner — he knew: his eighteen-month-old daughter could carry “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms” flawlessly, if wordlessly, after hearing him play it once…. He sat perfectly still on the piano bench and regarded her. She looked straight back at him with adult gravity.
It was a moment of equal parts anxiety and awe, like the striking of a wide seam of gold. The prospector sinks to his knees — he’s only been looking for coal. At a gush of oil he’d hoot, baptize himself and buy the drinks. But the sight of gold is different. He observes a moment’s silence. Then he rises, eyes watering. How to get it properly out of the earth? How not to be robbed in the meantime?
Eventually it would require real money. For now, he set aside his own studies and started teaching her himself. He read up on it. He bought a metronome, a gramophone, and began a collection of records. He ordered whole scores and song sheets from New York, Milan and Salzburg. He decided it wasn’t too soon to start in on the Vaccai Practical Method of Italian Singing. Mozart composed at three. At three, Kathleen sang, “Manca sollecita Più dell’usato, Ancor che s’agiti Con lieve fiato, Face che palpita Presso al morir.”
Materia was permitted to play piano again, this time exactly what was put in front of her:
scales, intervals, i semitoni
“this lesson must be sung adagio at first, and the time accelerated to allegro, according to the ability of the Pupil”
syncopation, ornamentation, literal translation, “The flame fails rapidly/more than usual/even if it flickers/with a light breath”
appoggiatura, introduzione al mordente
“the acciaccatura differs from the appoggiatura in as much as it does not interfere with the value or the accent of the note to which it is prefixed,” intervals of thirds, intervals of fourths, salti di quinta, salti di sesta
“the little bird in a narrow cage/why does one never hear it sing?”
Lesson XI, The Shake, “I would explain my anguish”
Lesson XII, On Roulades, “I cannot believe my thoughts”
Lesson XIII, Per Portare la Voce, “I cannot keep silent about everything.”
Materia played. Kathleen turned seven.
Materia watched it all from a great distance, and as the years flew by she missed her father more and more, forgetting everything but that he had once cared enough for her to find her a husband. All memories soften with age, and the good ones are also the most perishable — her mother and sisters had long ago been caressed to disappearing soapstone, conjured up till they faded to nothing. Like cave paintings by candle-light, she could only glimpse them now in the dark from the corner of her eye. But her father’s memory was durable. Obelisk eroded to a dome of rock, the touchstone of her loss.
“You’re too fat.”
Materia looked at James from afar and said, “Okay.”
He shook his head. Other men went strolling with their wives of a Saturday evening. Took them to church on Sunday, sat at opposite ends of a row of children. But not James. He didn’t want people thinking he’d married a woman old enough to be his mother, for one thing. But mainly, what with Materia gone slack in mind and body, he didn’t want his child stigmatized. For on top of everything else, Materia was dark. He tried not to see it, but it was one of those things that was always before his eyes, now that the scales had fallen from them.