Find it I do, and right I am, or I am right that I was wrong. How my memory distorted this story.
The third’s premiere was horribly received because it was horribly conducted, the original maestro having dropped quite dead right before the concert, an event not atypical considering Bruckner’s ubiquitous misfortune. During the performance, Bruckner was understandably lost in his own score because he wasn’t trained as a conductor. The audience, as lost as Bruckner, drifted, but didn’t boo or storm out. The other musician in the audience, who was with Mahler and who was just as dumbfounded, was Hugo Wolf (I like his Italian serenade). There is no mention of weeping, I’m afraid. Mahler and Wolf went on to become Bruckner’s students. For the rest of his life, Mahler spent the royalties he earned from his own music to publish Bruckner’s scores.
My notes shed more light on the strangeness of the life of Anton Bruckner. He lusted after little girls but did not, could not, act upon his perversion because he was a devout Catholic. He was not a priest. Of his own accord, he checked himself into a local institution to treat his predilection — his pedophilia, not his Catholicism. He composed his Mass in C Minor to thank God for curing his ignoble illness. Of course, this minor mass is a mess of monumental orchestrated earwax, a religiously pubertal intoxication of sounds. Let’s just say it’s childish.
Anton Bruckner died a virgin at seventy-two.
Piet Mondrian also died a virgin a month before he turned seventy-two.
I am seventy-two, but I’m not a virgin and not dead yet.
Hannah, however, died a virgin.
I will thank Fadia.
In the kitchen, I listen to what the witches are discussing on the landing. I don’t wish to interrupt them at an inappropriate juncture. Joumana is dominating the conversation. She’s announcing that her daughter, the once-loud one, has finally finished all her course requirements and all that’s left is the dissertation. The ladies are ecstatic, happy for her and immensely proud. The sounds cascading from above have a feel of rampant euphoria.
I surprise myself by feeling happy for Joumana too. I’ve watched her daughter, heard her, grow up. Joumana moved into the building while pregnant with her. How can I not be happy for the girl, and for Joumana? Her daughter — that irritating, loud, obnoxious girl who sucks all the oxygen from any room she enters — will make something of her life. She will bowl over anyone in her way — or out of her way, above, below, on the side — and she will amount to something. She’ll be happy. I’ll be happy for her.
I wait for a second before I open my door, allowing them the privacy to be happy together. In my head, I practice. I have something important I’m working on, urgent, that requires my attention, I only wanted to thank you for your wonderful okra stew. I will eat what I couldn’t finish yesterday for lunch today.
“Thank you,” I call up to Fadia, but I intend it to be for the three of them. “That was a mouthwatering stew. I am grateful.”
The three witches have a lot of hair atop their heads this morning, having obviously made it to the salon last evening. Even from below, I note the plucked eyebrows, the manicures, though I can’t tell about the leg waxing — their legs are out of sight from the landing. Joumana, her hair rice brown with crisscrossing streaks of blond highlights, holds a coffee kettle, about to fill Marie-Thérèse’s cup. Bad timing on my part.
“Let me pour you a cup of coffee,” Joumana says. “Come join us.”
The witches must have decided on a complete makeover. Fadia sports dark red hair. I’m trying to compare it to another color in order to give you an idea, but I can’t. Like Faulkner, her hair color today is sui generis.
My white hair has little company in Beirut, my blue hair even less.
“Why, thank you,” I say as I back just a tad into my doorway, “but I’m afraid I can’t. I’m working on. .”
Something. Just say the word something. You don’t have to explain.
Rain falls behind the witches as if surrounding them; there is no wall at their backs. They regard me with some concern. I notice that their seating arrangement has changed recently — recently, meaning in the last two years, since that was the last time I saw the coffee klatsch. Witches should be heard and not seen. Fadia, not Marie-Thérèse, claims the middle position now, and moreover, she has given up on the wooden-legged soft-twine stool. Draped today in a palette more Sgt. Pepper than Yellow Submarine, she reclines sideways, reposes, on an outdoor chaise longue, a pre-impressionist odalisque, paying homage to the goddess of indolence, Greta Garbo (though Fadia doesn’t want to be alone).
“Urgent,” I say.
I am becoming incompetent, an aphasic stutterer.
So much hair, so many hair-care products. Short hair is rare in Lebanon; possibly one out of fifty women keeps her hair above shoulder length, something to do with perceptions of femininity, I assume. None of us wishes to look different. My hair is up, clasped in a semi-bun right now, as it is practically every day. Rarely is it loose or down, yet I don’t consider cutting it short.
I don’t, even though I do look different. I can feel the witches inspecting me. Our delightfully gawky neighbor, see how wonderfully she straddles the border between woman and giraffe.
This is ridiculous. I am playing the fool. I take a long, calming breath.
“I’m sorry, Joumana,” I say. “I can’t have coffee right now. I appreciate the invitation, truly do, but I’m working on something, something I need to finish before leaving in an hour. I can’t spare the time at this moment. Thank you, though.”
Now I have to leave my shelter within an hour.
She should ask again, or at least suggest that I come up another day — any one of the witches should. But they don’t.
As I begin to withdraw — one step and I’m back in the comfort of my apartment — Joumana announces loudly, “My daughter finished all her course work for the Ph.D. program. All she has left is to write the dissertation, and defend it, of course.”
“Dr. Mira,” Fadia says, a bit too excitedly. “I like the sound of it. Dr. Mira. We have a doctor in the house.”
“That’s wonderful news,” I say, as if this is the first I’ve heard of it. “I’m very happy for you. That’ll be quite an achievement.”
“May I tell you the subject of her dissertation?” She asks the question not forcefully but insistently.
She interrupts my head chatter. As if involuntarily, I feel a minuscule grin crease my face. I do in fact want to know.
Joumana’s face brightens. “Tombstones,” she says. “She’s studying tombstones, particularly the relationship of the shape of the stones to the inscriptions and icons.”
The gravestone, upon its body, shall begin to consider where my name is to be inscribed.
Why do such thoughts cross my mind?
“That’s an awful subject,” says Fadia. “It’s so morose. Gravestones? Why would she be interested in something like that?”
“That’s incredible,” says Marie-Thérèse. “I think it could be very interesting.”
“Have you told your daughter the truth, dearest?” Fadia says. “That she’s adopted? She can’t possibly be yours. Gravestones?”
Joumana seems to hear neither of her friends.
I say, “Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo.”
“What was that?” says Fadia.
“Latin,” says Marie-Thérèse.
“Do you know the language?” Joumana asks.
“Latin? Me?” I don’t know why the question sounds preposterous. “No, I don’t speak it.”
“I do.” Joumana looks elegant this morning, a cross between the society matron she isn’t and the college professor she is. “What I mean is that I read it, of course, not speak it. Who speaks Latin anymore? I studied it in college.”