"What is his name?"
She was surprised. "I thought you knew him," she said, softening her voice, knitting her brows with concern. "Excuse me, Triana. He told us that you knew him."
"I do, I know him very well. I think it's wonderful that he'll play at the Chapel. But I don't know his name."
"Stefan Stefanovsky," she said carefully. "I memorized it, I wrote it down, went over the spelling with him. Russian names." She repeated it, said it in a simple unadorned way, with the accent on the first syllable of Stefan. The man had an undeniable charm, with or without the violin. Very distinctive dark eyebrows, very straight across, eccentric hair, at least in these days, for a classical musician.
I smiled. "It is all changed now. The longhairs are the rock stars, not the longhairs anymore, how odd. And you know the strange thing is when I look back on all the concerts I've ever attended-even the very first-it was Isaac Stern, you know-I don't remember longhairs having any long hair."
I was worrying her.
"I'm delighted," I said gathering my thoughts. "So yo u thought him handsome?"
"Oh, everyone swooned when he walked in the door! Such a dramatic demeanor.
And then the accent, and when he just raised the violin and bow and began to play. I think he stopped traffic outside."
I laughed.
"It was something very different he played for us," she said, "from what he played-"
Politely she stopped, and lowered her eyes.
“...on the night you found me here, with Karl," I said.
"Yes."
"That was beautiful music."
"Yes, I suppose it was, and I really didn't hear it, so to speak."
"Understandable."
She was suddenly confused, doubtful about the propriety or wisdom of this.
"After he played, he spoke very highly of you, said you truly were the rare person who understood his music. And this to a room of fainting women of all ages, including half the Junior League."
I laughed. It wasn't merely to put her at ease. It was the image of the women, young and old, being swept off their feet by this phantom.
My, but this was a stunning shock, this turn of events. This invitation.
"What time tonight, Miss Hardy? " I asked. "What time will he play? I don't intend to miss this."
She stared at me for a moment in lingering discomfort and then with great relief plunged into the details.
I left for the concert at five minutes before the time.
IT was dark, of course, it being the season for darkness at eight o'clock, yet there was no rain tonight and only a friendly, gentle air, almost warm.
I walked out my own gate, turned left at the corner of Third and walked slowly all the way back to Prytania Street on the old, broken brick sidewalks, treasuring every bump, every hole, every hazard. My heart was thumping. In fact, I was so full of anticipation I could scarcely stand it. The last few hours had dragged and I had thought only of him.
I'd even dressed for him! How stupid. Of course for me that only meant a better white ruffled blouse with more and finer lace, and a better black silk skirt to the ankles and a light sleeveless tunic of black velvet. The better Triana Uniform. That's all it meant. And my hair loose and clean. That's all.
A dim street lamp burned ahead of me as I approached the end of the block, making the darkness all the more oppressive around me, and for the first time I realized there was no oak any longer on the corner of Third and Prytania!
It must have been years since I had walked back this block, stood here. There had been an oak, surely, because I could remember the streetlamp shining through it, down on the high black iron fence and on the grass. Strong, hefty, black oak branches, twisted and not so very thick, not so heavy as to fall down.
Who has done this to you? I spoke to the earth, the broken place in the bricks. I saw it now, where the oak had been, but all roots were gone. It was only earth, the inevitable earth. Who took this tree that might have lived for centuries?
Ahead, across Prytania, the deeper regions of the Garden District seemed hollow and black and empty, their mansions folded up and latched.
But to the left of me, on Prytania, before the Chapel there were bright lights, and I could hear a very agreeable mingling of cheerful voices.
Only the Chapel occupied this corner lot, just as my house occupied the corner lot facing St. Charles Avenue far away and directly behind, past cherry laurels and oaks and wild grass, past bamboo and oleander.
The Chapel was the bottom floor of a great house, much larger and finer than my own. It was a house just as old as mine, and born infinitely more grand, of masonry and trimmed in very fancy ironwork.
It had had once-most certainly-the classic center hall with parlors on either side, but that had all been changed long before I was born. The whole first floor had been hollowed out, dressed with statues and holy pictures and a gorgeous white trimmed altar.
A tabernacle of gold. What else? Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a Russian icon.
That was the Blessed Mother to whom we had brought our flowers.
Ironic, that, but absolutely of no significance.
Of course, he knew how much I had loved this place, this building, this garden, this fence, the Chapel itself, and he knew all about the little wilting handful of flowers on the Altar Rail, stems broken by our little hands, the little bouquets that we would leave during our evening walks, Rosalind and Mother and I, before the war ended, before Katrinka and Faye came, before the drinking came. Before Death came. Before Fear came. Before Sorrow.
He knew. He knew how it had been-this great massive house which still looked on the outside like a grand home, its front porches parallel and broad, its colonnettes made of iron, its twin chimneys straight and firm atop the high gable of the third floor in that unmistakable New Orleans pattern.
Chimneys floating together under the stars. Chimneys for fireplaces long gone, perhaps.
In those upstairs rooms, my Mother had gone to school as a girl. In the Chapel itself, my Mother's coffin had lain on the bier. In the Chapel alone, I had played the organ in the dark, on summer nights, when the priests let me lock up, and no one was there. I tried and tried to make music.
Only the Blessed Sacrament could have been so patient with the miserable broken bits of song I played, the chords, the hymns I tried to learn with some vague promise that I could one day play if and when the organ lady would allow, but which never happened because I never got good enough and was never brave enough even to attempt it.
The Garden District ladies always wore such pretty hats to Mass. I think we were the only ones who wore kerchiefs like peasants.
It didn't take a death to make me remember, a funeral to make me cherish, or even the sweet twilight visits with flowers in our hands, or the picture of Mother with only a few other girls, rare high school graduates for that time -bobbed hair and w hite stockings-standing with their bouquets to the left of this very gate.
Who ever prayed in that old Chapel who didn't remember it?
That old Catholicism was never without the scent of pure beeswax candles, and the incense that lingered forever in any church where the Monstrance had been held high, and there had been sweet-faced saints in the shadows then, artists of pain like St. Rita with the wound in her forehead, and Christ's dreadful journey to Calvary marked in the Stations on the walls.
The Rosary wasn’t rote prayer, but a chant through which we pictured the suffering Christ. The Prayer of Quiet meant to sit very still in the pew, clear the mind, let God speak directly to you. I knew the Latin of the Ordinary of the Mass by heart. I knew what the hymns meant.