The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
It’s strange how the subliminal effects of my hearing “O Canada” in my sleep were coincident with more meddling on Grace’s part—she’d decided Em and I should be married, for Matthew’s sake. Em and I were pretty sure it didn’t matter to Matthew whether we were married or not.
“It’s for your sake that we should be married, kiddo,” was all Em said about it, at first. This would become clear. The singing of the Canadian national anthem was intended to indoctrinate me. In her own way, Em was an old-fashioned fiction writer—a plot-driven storyteller. My becoming a Canadian citizen was part of the plot.
Em would shepherd me through the immigration process. She knew the steps I had to take, en route to my applying for Canadian citizenship. My first step was to marry her, Em said. Em was already a Canadian citizen; she had a Canadian passport. If we were married, Em could sponsor my immigrating to her country of birth. Like me, Em would have to go through the business of becoming a permanent resident of Canada.
I don’t remember the rules and regulations, because Em kept track of them for me. I would have what was called a “record of landing”; Em kept this and my “record of travel” for me. I think there was something about my living in Canada, and filing taxes in Canada—for three of the next five years—but Em would remember this for me. When you have someone to guide you in a foreign country, you’re not responsible for the details. I just knew my moving to Canada began with my marrying Em.
“We have to be married before you can start immigrating, kiddo,” was the way Em put it.
“Okay,” I said. We doubted the zither man was alive. Given how Em and I had met, and the surrounding events of my mother’s wedding, how could Em and I get married without an Austrian zither-meister? Em imagined the old Austrian with kids and grandkids, only because she remembered his name for me. Son of the Bride, the edelweiss man had called me. Em searched the phone books for Manhattan and Brooklyn. There were businesses beginning with Son of, and Daughter of, but no musicians—not a Son of Zither Man or a Daughter of Zither-Meister, as Em imagined. We searched together for “The Third Man Theme” or “The Harry Lime Theme,” and for just plain zither players. There was no one.
“You can find anyone you’re looking for in New York, Adam,” Uncle Martin once told me. Em had an idea.
“How do you say The Third Man in German?” Em asked me.
“Der dritte Mann, and Anything Else on a Zither.” This was what Em found in the Brooklyn phone book—this was what an unnamed zither player was promising. Even Elvis?
There was no trace of an Austrian accent in the recorded message Em and I listened to; the voice on the zither player’s answering machine was all Brooklyn. He sounded like an emotionally disturbed high school student, the kind of kid who eventually commits a violent crime—he shoots his teacher, or all the girls in his class.
“I do private parties, but nothin’ religious. I’ll do a weddin’—the more secula, the betta,” the zither kid began. “I gotta big repertoire, for a zitha—no band, just a zitha. If you don’t know what a zitha is, you betta call somebody else,” the zither kid concluded. In the background, we could hear “The Harry Lime Theme”—the familiar strings, plucking away. I will hear this song forever, whether that’s a good thing or not. Em and I couldn’t speak. The Brooklyn boy’s vernacular was unexpected, but the emotional wallop of “The Third Man Theme” surprised us more.
The boy in Brooklyn would turn out to be the grandson of the old Austrian zither-meister. When Em and I had recovered sufficiently to meet him, he told us his grandfather never stopped talking about a wedding in New Hampshire, where an old man in diapers was killed by lightning. “My grandfather—it was my mom’s wedding,” I told the zither kid. We met the boy in a coffeehouse of his choice on the Lower East Side; the walls were covered with black-and-white photographs of the Brooklyn Bridge. The kid brought his zither, though we never said we were auditioning him.
“Son of the Bride,” the zither grandkid said, almost reverentially. “I hear there was orgasms goin’ on—long-lastin’ ones, all weekend,” the zither man’s grandson told us, in hushed tones. “My grandfather neva got ova the orgasm girl.”
That makes two of us, I thought of telling the kid, but not with Em there. Em and I hadn’t delved into the details of my overhearing her orgasms. Knowing Nora, she would have said something to Em—on the subject of Em’s orgasms having a life-changing effect on me—but Em and I had not discussed her orgasms in detail.
I was remembering how the zither man had taken his time, getting up the nerve to tackle Elvis, when Em just started singing in the coffeehouse on the Lower East Side. Well, out came the zither; the grandkid hadn’t hesitated. The old edelweiss man, in his lederhosen and the Tyrolean hat with a feather, had to work up the courage to give us the zither version of “Heartbreak Hotel” and “I Forgot to Remember to Forget,” but the zither-meister’s grandson knew his Elvis cold, the way the kid knew his Harry Lime. They must have known the zither boy in the coffeehouse. Everyone in the place was happy to hear him play; our waiter looked like he’d been waiting for the zither.
There would be no mention of Em as the orgasm girl, as the zither kid referred to the legendary character. Em didn’t identify herself, and I wasn’t going to blow the whistle on her. The zither kid had idolized the orgasm girl; she was the most desirable girlfriend imaginable, in the kid’s estimation. “She neva speaks, and she neva stops comin’—there’s no beatin’ that,” the talented grandchild assured us. We didn’t want to disillusion him, now that Em was speaking. And the zither boy’s segue from “Heartbreak Hotel” to “I Forgot to Remember to Forget” was seamless. Em and I wanted his music at our wedding. Em’s way of demonstrating that she couldn’t possibly have been the orgasm girl was to keep singing.
The kid knew the zither-meister’s liveliest and most lugubrious numbers. He serenaded us, and the other patrons of the coffeehouse, with “The Café Mozart Waltz” and “Farewell to Vienna.” I let Em do the talking for us; she wanted to keep speaking as soon as she stopped singing. I thought of the old Austrian musician, taking Em’s orgasms to his grave—as I would take them to mine. Em just kept talking.
Em told the zither man’s grandchild we were having a civil marriage—“the most secular wedding you can imagine,” was how Em put it. Molly’s Manchester house was small, and there would be no guests to speak of—only Molly and Matthew were invited. Em explained that Matthew was my kid, and Molly had been the maid of honor at my mom’s wedding. The zither grandkid remained calm; the old Austrian must not have talked about my mother and Molly.
I remembered telling the zither-meister about the complications of my mom’s wedding dress—how the maid of honor had to wrestle the dress on and off her. “That’s not for us to think about, Son of the Bride,” the old Austrian had cautioned me. Em and I tried to be discreet with the talented grandson. We did not get into details about the justice of the peace. Elsie was a local Vermont magistrate, and a ski instructor at Bromley—a somewhat younger friend of Molly’s and my mother’s.
“Elsie is not a clergywoman—I doubt she ever goes to church,” was all Em told the zither boy about the justice of the peace.
“Cool,” the grandkid said. I can’t remember his last name, but his first name was Ernst. “Ernie sounds betta in Brooklyn,” he said, so we called him Ernie.