“What the hell? You teach music, don’t you?”
“You’d be amazed how big the field is. So what’s this tour about? I can’t believe you’re finally going to give your countrymen another shot at you.”
“Twelve cities, eight weeks.” He was really wounded, and fighting not to sound it. “I guess I’m lucky there are still twelve cities left in the States that book oldies acts, huh?”
“That’s counting Dallas and Fort Worth separately, right?”
“We’re playing your little backwater at the beginning of June.”
“My little… Not possible.”
“What do you mean, ‘Not possible’? You telling me I don’t know where we’re booked?”
“I’m telling you there’s no way you’re singing in Oakland.”
“Oakland, San Francisco. Same place, right?”
My laugh was like hot tea going down my windpipe. “You come out, I’ll show you around. So how’s everyone in the group? How’s Celeste?” Now his rest told everything. Too late, I asked, “How long ago?”
“Let’s see. Within the last year. It’s fine. Mutual consent. What do they call it? Amicable.”
“What happened?”
“You know these mixed marriages. They never work out.”
“Was there…someone else involved?”
“That depends on what you mean by ‘involved.’” He spelled it out for me. Kimberly Monera, the blond, bloodless, anemic ghost, had tried to come back to him. Brown child in tow, Tunisian marriage smashed, famous father disowning her, she showed up in northern Europe. She hunted Jonah down and told him that he’d been lodged in the dead center of her imagination, with no one else even close, her whole music-ruined life. “I did nothing, Joey. Didn’t even touch her, except to turn her back around to face Italy and pat her shoulders good-bye.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You think I do?” His voice sounded as it had at fourteen. “As soon as I sent her away…nothing.”
“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”
“I mean, I felt nothing. Zero. Total anesthesia. I didn’t even want to look at Celeste. I didn’t even want to sit in the same room with her. Don’t blame her for splitting. And it wasn’t just her. Sleeping, eating, drinking, playing, singing: everything that used to be pleasure. Gone.”
“How long did that last?”
“How long? What time is it now?”
I panicked, as if it were still my job to keep the show rolling. “But you’re still recording. Still performing. You’re about to do the debut American tour.”
“Funny thing. Get the discs. Have a listen. Somehow, it’s done wonders for my voice.”
I felt myself slipping back into his orbit. I had to lash out. “Send me one. You have my damn address. Send me one, and I’ll listen.”
He asked about Ruth, and then about his nephews. I gave him the short version. By the time he hung up, I was deep in all the numbness that had swallowed him. Our worlds had fallen off each other’s radar. His performance in San Francisco would have come and gone, and I’d never have heard about it, even in passing.
Three weeks later, a stack of discs arrived. Inside was a short note. “I’m having tickets sent out. For the four of you, or whoever you can scalp them to. See you in June.”
The picture on the Gesualdo CD shocked me. The whole of the newly reconstituted Voces Antiquae stood in a midrange shot in the portal of a Gothic church. They were all white. From that distance: every one of them. I got as far as getting the disc out of the shrink wrap and putting it in the player. But I couldn’t bring myself to listen.
“Go with me,” I begged Ruth. “Not for him. For me. When was the last time I asked you for anything?”
“You ask me for something every week, Joseph. You ask for more gear than my science teachers.”
“I mean for me.”
She picked up the cover of the Gesualdo. Her hands were shaking, as if he could reject her even through that object. Her eyes strayed across the group’s photo. Her mouth twisted a little. “Which one’s Jonah? Just kidding.” She pulled out the liner notes and read the first paragraph. The cadence of the words angered her, and she handed the disc back to me.
“What do you think? Just to hear.”
Her voice was ragged. “Go ask the boys.”
The real CD in a real CD jewel box did intrigue Kwame. This was before worldwide make-your-own. “I got an uncle in a crew? That’s dope. Put it on, brother. Let the brother do his shit.” My nephew didn’t last through the first hemiola. “You fuckin’ with my bean, ’Tween.”
Little Robert, next to him, squealed with delight. “Yeah! Don’t be fuckin’ our beam!” I stared at him. He smirked and clapped a hand over his mouth.
I went back to Ruth. “So what did they say?” she asked. For a moment, she seemed to be hoping for a yes.
“They’re going to wait for the video.”
She lifted her palms. “What do you expect, Joe? Not our world.”
“Our world’s anywhere we go.”
“They don’t want us there. So we don’t have time for it.”
“Can’t be both, Ruth. Can’t both them and us decide.” She said nothing. “He wants you to go, Ruth. He wants us all to be there.”
I held out the tickets Jonah had sent. She gazed at them without touching. “Forty-five dollars? Can we just take the cash instead? Think of all the subsidized lunches…”
“Ruth? For me? It’s eating me up inside.”
She considered it. She really did. But the last sadness in my life was minuscule compared to what still had hold of her. She smiled a little, but not at me. “Can you imagine Robert and me dressing up to go to a show like this? Not without a purse full of smoke bombs, honey.” Then, not looking at me, forgiving me my trespass: “You go if you want. I think you ought to.” I turned to go. “He can always come by here, if he wants.”
The Friday of the concert, I went alone across the bay to Grace Cathedral. I knew the drill well enough not to contact Jonah beforehand. Of course, he didn’t contact me. I sat unrecognized in the fake Île-de-France nave, amazed by how many people turned out for the event. All my life in classical music, the audience had consisted of the disaffected and the dying. Mostly the dying. Either the art truly belonged to another lost time or certain human beings woke one day, crippled with age and desperate to learn a repertoire that was heavier than the rest of existence, before death came and stripped us of all our tribes. Sounds almost as old as death itself, sounds that had never belonged to them, sounds that no longer belonged to anyone. For what could belonging mean to the dead?
But this crowd was young, vital, manicured — crisp with the next new thing. I listened to two couples behind me as the preconcert excitement gathered, comparing the virtues of the Tallis Scholars and the Hilliard Ensemble the way one might compare two subtle Burgundies. I couldn’t follow the discography. I’d been away too long. I twisted around to check the swelling crowd. No more than twelve black faces were in attendance. But of course that was a count no one could make just by looking.
The house went hushed and the group sauntered on. The applause bewildered me. The church was full of fans, people who’d been waiting years to hear this blending. A blast of panic: I wasn’t dressed. I didn’t know the program. There was no way I could get up onstage without humiliating myself. A second later, I was again blissfully no one.
The six voices — two of them unknown to me — wandered at random to their marks on the stage. They dressed more silkily than we had back when. Otherwise, they sought that same casual, choreographed shock. My brother stopped and turned, staring out over the heads of the audience. The others seemed ambushed by calm. They stood for an awful moment, as we must have stood, building the intake, looking inward. Then the first fifths crystallized out of them.