I got a postcard from New York entitled Yusef. It was a black-and-white photograph (a perfect photograph, according to Lía) of four jazz musicians standing in front of the famous fifties jazz club Minton’s Playhouse: Teddy Hill, Roy Eldridge, Howard McGhee and, of course, as his wife called him, Melodious Thunk, but a symbolic Melodious Thunk, if there are such things as symbols, a metaphorical Melodious Thunk, if metaphors are anything more than tiny ants crawling furiously between your toes. Milan wrote: They called him Yusef. No one knows if that was really his name or even what country he was from. The old people say listening to Yusef’s accordion was like listening to a siren’s sweet song. The old people say listening to Yusef’s accordion was like listening to the cries of Christ on the cross. The old people say Yusef managed to survive four years in Chelmno Nazi extermination camp, on the shores of the river Ner, playing at German officers’ parties every night. The old people say Yusef, night after night, played one piece for every Gypsy killed that day in the gas chamber. The old people say Yusef, during those four years, played 350,000 pieces. Twenty-five a night, more or less. The old people say when he was freed after the war, Yusef unstrapped his accordion and left it on the green grass of Chelmno.
I got a postcard of a bikinied blond with huge tits and huge lips who was straddling a Harley. Postmarked New Orleans. Milan wrote: My father says Yusef the accordionist never existed.
I got a giant postcard sent from Hawaii, though the photo, for some reason, was a cosmopolitan-looking aerial shot of the city of Philadelphia. VISIT THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE said a yellow neon sign whose huge letters actually seemed to twinkle. Milan wrote: The Gypsies’ origins, Eduardito, are eminently musical. This is how it happened: Around the year 428, the Gypsies arrived in Persia when Bahran Gur, the Shah, wishing to please his subjects, imported twelve thousand musicians from India. No. That’s not how it happened, Eduardito. This is how it happened: One day, God put a violin on Saint Peter’s shoulder. When the people began to demand that he play them a tune, Saint Peter became frightened and ran off to find God, and God calmed him by saying that he’d given him the violin so that his music might make the people happy and forever keep their spirits up. Then Saint Peter told God that if that were true, there should be many more musicians in the world. God asked him who they should be and Saint Peter, as he played a jaunty tune, replied: the Gypsies. But no, that’s not how it happened either, Eduardito. This is how it happened: Once upon a time there was a very beautiful girl who was in love with a tall, strong, hardworking peasant who never noticed her. One afternoon, as the girl was walking in the forest, feeling sad and lonely, there appeared before her a huge man with purple eyes, dressed in red, with two horns on his head and hooves for feet: the devil, stroking her lips with his long, sharp nail, promised her the young peasant’s love if in exchange she would give him her entire family. The girl agreed gladly. She gave the devil her father, and the devil turned him into a violin. She gave the devil her mother, and the devil turned her into the bow and her long gray locks into the bow hair. She gave the devil her four brothers, and the devil turned them into four strings. Then the devil taught the girl to play the violin, and she learned to play so sweetly and so tenderly and so beautifully that when the young peasant heard her, he immediately fell in love. And they married and lived happily together for many years. But one day, after playing and dancing in the forest, they both went off to pick raspberries and left the violin behind on the forest floor. Upon their return, they could no longer find it. Then, from a cloudy sky, the devil descended in a chariot pulled by four black horses and carried off the unlucky couple forever. For a long time, the violin lay there in the forest, hidden beneath dry leaves and moss and more dry leaves. But one night, some Gypsies camping in the forest sent a boy in search of firewood for their bonfire and, when he kicked a pile of leaves, the boy discovered the violin. He stroked it with a twig and the violin produced the most perfect sound ever heard. The boy picked up the violin and the bow and headed back to his caravan. And that was how the Gypsies discovered music.
I got a postcard of a tuna flying in the middle of a market in Seattle, Washington. Milan wrote: In Wales there lived a Gypsy they called Black Ellen. She was an expert storyteller. They say that she could spend all night telling just one story. They say that out of the blue, just to test her audience, Black Ellen would suddenly stop in the middle of a story and shout tshiocha, which means boots in Romany, and if her audience did not shout back cholova, which means socks in Romany, Black Ellen would get up off the floor, shake out her skirt, and leave without finishing the story.
Sounds like Scheherazade, said Lía, in bra and panties and painting her toenails cherry red.
I got a postcard from Cleveland. It was a black-and-white portrait of a guitarist, seated, cigarette in mouth, sporting a thin mustache like Humphrey Bogart, or actually more like Fred Astaire. Milan wrote: Django Reinhardt was born in Belgium, though he just as easily could have been born in any country his Manouche Gypsy caravan was passing through. His father was a musician and his mother was a singer. As a boy, Django displayed the following talents: stealing chickens; finding and cleaning World War I bullet cartridges, whose casings his mother then reworked and sold as jewelry and brass finger cymbals; catching river trout just by thrusting his bare hand into the water and tickling them with his fingers until, contented and spellbound, they simply let themselves be grabbed; and finally, of course, the guitar. At the age of twelve, with his family living in a Gypsy camp just outside of Paris, Django was already playing guitar at every bal-musette in the city. At the age of eighteen, after a fire his wife, Bella, had started accidentally, he was left with a deformed left hand, almost a hook, yet somehow he managed to change his technique (using only two fingers now) and continued to play, eventually becoming the greatest jazz guitarist in the world. And yet always, when it came down to it, a Gypsy guitarist. Andrés Segovia heard him play once and was so impressed that he asked to see the score, but Django just laughed and told him that there wasn’t one, that it was a simple improvisation. Jean Cocteau said of Django: He lived as one dreams of living, in a caravan, and even when it was no longer a caravan, somehow it still was. Although his legal name was Jean Reinhardt, he’d been called Django since he was a boy. Django, in Romany, means awake, or more precisely, I awaken. It’s a first-person verb. I awaken.
I got a postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge, sent from San Francisco. Milan wrote: Last night, as I was playing in a beautiful auditorium, everything began to tremble. Some people stood. Others left. And I kept playing Stravinsky as if nothing much were happening. Nothing much was happening. In Romany, Eduardito, earthquake is I phuv kheldias, which means the earth danced.
I got two giant postcards, on the same day, from Orlando.
Liszt I, the first was titled, and it was a picture of Donald Duck dressed as a fireman. Milan wrote: You asked me that night, in that strange cafeteria in Antigua, why I felt such an attraction to Liszt’s music. Remember? And I replied with some nonsense about improvisation, which I suppose is true. But there’s always more than one truth to everything. And a movie was made based on that other truth, a very complicated truth that is the life and music of Franz Liszt. I can’t recall the name of the movie and it’s not even very good, but it illustrates the point I want to make. I hope you understand. It’s the year 1840, or thereabouts. Franz Liszt and Count Teleky arrive at a Gypsy carnival in Pest, Hungary. As they saunter through the town square, Liszt is talking to his friend about the difference between a mere performer and a true composer. Suddenly, Liszt’s attention is captured by a Gypsy boy playing the violin with such virtuosity that he immediately reminds him of Paganini. Josy, the boy’s name is, and he says he’ll do a magic trick if they give him some spare change. Count Teleky gives him some coins and the boy disappears, running off. They set out down the town’s narrow streets to look for him but only find his older brother and grandmother, a very shrewd and very kind old lady who, after a brief debate, ends up reading Liszt’s future. I can’t recall what she says, but he, frightened, slips into the crowd. That night, Liszt is sitting there at his piano, trying to recall the melody Josy played. He can’t. He gets mad, goes out to look for him, and finally finds him at the Gypsy camp, playing the violin once more. Liszt attempts to convince the boy’s family that talent like his needs instruction and tutelage and refinement and culture, but Josy loves his freedom too much and won’t accept the offer. Liszt insists. He wants to save him from savagery. He wants to Europeanize him. When the grandmother finds out that the man will not only teach him free of charge but also cover his room and board, she agrees, on the condition that she accompany her grandson. Later, all three pull up to Liszt’s residence in a carriage. The servants wash and dress Josy, but the boy eats with his hands, runs wild, scribbles all over a bust of Beethoven. Meanwhile, Count Teleky bets Liszt that he won’t be able to train the Gypsy boy in time for the annual music competition. Josy is wary of musical scores, believes in improvisation, refuses to learn music theory, and keeps playing by ear. Liszt begins to grow desperate. With a bit of help from the grandmother, Josy agrees at least to try this new way of playing music, and he and Liszt start playing together. And they both like it. They have a good time. One night, Josy hears his teacher give a recital and is enthralled. After the recital, at some type of dinner or formal reception, I don’t really remember, Josy agrees to play a piece for the guests. But suddenly a woman screams that someone’s stolen her gold bracelet, and everyone suspects the Gypsy. Humiliated, Josy runs away. The bracelet, of course, turns out to have fallen between some cushions or onto a rug or something. On returning home that night, Liszt finds Josy in the bathtub, scrubbing and scraping himself raw with a bar of soap. He wants, he says, sobbing, to wash off his Gypsy color. Every time I see this scene it makes me want to vomit.