Fall on Your Knees (60 page)

Friday —
She has a first name: Rose. If you could meet her you’d know how unlikely that is. And what’s more, she can actually play the piano.

I came early today. I saw the Kaiser chatting with His Most Terrible Majesty Signor Gatti-Casazza out front and I slipped by and up the stairs. That’s when I heard the most sublime, the most beautiful music. I thought it was Chopin at first, it was that romantic and thoughtful, but I knew it wasn’t quite that, then I thought Debussy, it was dreamy enough but there was too much space in between some notes and not enough between others and time changes that slipped by before you could pinpoint them and sudden catches of achingly sweet melody that would just end like a bridge in mid air or turn into something else, and though there were many melodies, you could never hum the whole thing, nor could you figure out how they could all belong in the same piece and yet somehow they do, and you have no idea how or when it should end. In fact it doesn’t end, it stops. Some modern composer I guess.

Anyway it was
her
playing! The sourpuss accompanist. She didn’t see me. Someone should do something about her clothes. She dresses in pink, with puffed sleeves, pleated skirts and a hemline one inch above the ankle. Looks like she just came out of church around twenty years ago. Hand-me-downs maybe, from some rich battleaxe in the Temperance League. Anyhow, when she stopped playing I said, “That was nice, who wrote it?” And she just glared at me. If looks could kill. Just then the Kaiser came in, so our delightful conversation was cut short. He said his usual “Let’s start with C Major, Miss Lacroix,” and you’d never know she was a musician. But I know.

Wednesday —
Miss Lacroix and I have a game we play. It’s called Kathleen Arrives before the Kaiser and Listens to Miss Lacroix Play Piano Who Pretends Not to Know Miss Piper Is There. Why are the only people I’ve met in this city either senile, sadistic or eccentric?

Thurs. —
After listening to Miss Lacroix play in the mornings before class I feel like a total impostor with no musicianship. (She’d love to know that.) I have figured out one of her secrets. She is the composer of the beautiful strange music she plays. If she even “composes” it — I think she just makes it up as she goes along because her pieces always come to an end the moment before I hear the street door open downstairs, which means she has seen the Kaiser through the window.

Saturday —
This morning I got there even earlier and broke the Kaiser’s rules. I sang whatever I darn well pleased. I sang Tosca! I felt like a criminal or a nymphomaniac. And when Miss Lacroix arrived I was dying to see the look on her face when she discovered she’d been beaten at her own game, but I didn’t want to acknowledge her presence any more than she does mine. She left and I could have killed her except I suspect she just went out into the hall to listen, not wanting to give me the satisfaction of an audience.

Friday, May 31 —
Got her! This morning I came to the end of “Let the Bright Seraphim,” then I got up silently and crept to the door and there was Rose, sitting on a chair tilted against the wall with her eyes closed. Her profile is imposing. I wish I could draw it. She is arrogant even with her eyes closed. Especially with her eyes closed. She has a tall round forehead and a high straight nose that flares out at the base of the nostrils, and her lips sit against each other like dark pillows. Almost purple. The only way my lips could remotely look like that would be if I puckered up for a kiss, but she doesn’t look like she’s expecting anyone to kiss her. Her eyes go up slightly at the outside corners almost as if she were Oriental. She has high cheekbones and a dimple in her chin which is entirely wasted on her, dimples being accessories to girlish charm. She reminds me of the pictures of African women on P.T. Barnum posters except she hasn’t got the rings around her neck. And she’s not wearing a colourful turban, she has her hair pasted to her head in two pigtails with little ribbons that look utterly perverse on her. Not to mention her Pollyanna dress with the ruffles. Doesn’t she have a mother? Or a mirror? I noticed all this in the three seconds before she opened her eyes and looked at me. She didn’t say a word, just got up and went into the studio and started playing. SCALES. Then she spoke, and I should have slugged her. She said without even looking at me, “You embellish too much. That’s a thing of the past.” Have I mentioned she’s five foot ten?

2:30 am —
The Harlem Rhythm Hounds!! But the sun is coming up, good-night.

Sat. —
Can you wail like that saxophone, can you walk like that bass guitar, can you talk like the trumpet and beat like the drum? Then what are you doing so far from home, little girl?

Mon, 3 —
David is too embarrassed to dance but there are lots of fellas willing to dance with me and I feel perfectly safe doing so because, after all, I have an escort! He was scandalized when I danced with a coloured man named Nico but he got over it as well he should, I fail to see why colour should cause such a commotion. I wonder if there’s anything like this going on back in the Pier or Fourteen Yard? I was too much of a priss then to find out. Tomorrow night David’s taking me to Ziegfield’s Follies. Maybe I’ll introduce him to Giles.

tues —
I want to be a show girl, I’m going to take tap-dancing lessons, forget the opera. I think this is an enchanted city where you hear with different ears and see with different eyes. I feel like I’ve been living in a graveyard till now. Reading dead books, listening to dead music, singing dead songs about dying. Beautiful, yes, but dead, like Snow White in her glass coffin — except the music I’ve been singing doesn’t move when you kiss it. Or at least, if it could, I haven’t found how to make it.

wed —
I am so irresponsible, dear Diary, how could I not tell you who David is?

He’s my soldier. He said, “Excuse me, miss, is this seat taken?” He’s nineteen and he’s on his way to the front. He is so debonair. At least his uniform is. To listen to he’s very sweet. He’s a farmer and his father is angry at him for enlisting but he’s determined. He wants to live a little before getting hitched to a plough for life and who can blame him? I met him at Chan’s, where I go to read and eat something that goes crunch. (D. is tall and quite nice-looking, but I don’t think he could be the one from my fortune cookie because his hair is sandy and his eyes are blue.) Anyhow, we must have gone to fifteen clubs and we ended up at a place that was half theatre, half bar, called Club Mecca. It’s up in Harlem on Seventh Avenue and I had to drag my soldier in there. And that’s where I heard JAZZ.

How can I describe it? I heard my mother play ragtime at home but jazz is something else.

fri. June 7 —
Sweet Jessie Hogan is a singer. I am not a singer.

Sun. —
Had David over to meet Giles. He liked her. Ate everything on his plate. She showed him a decrepit photo album — a gallery of spinsters — and either he’s a great actor or he was actually interested.

tues —
Jazz.

wed —
Razzmatazz.

thurs —
I can truck. I can ball the jack, I May Be Crazy but I Ain’t No Fool so Rock Me in the Cradle of Love.

fri — June 14 —
A riddle: how can I be singing scales for the Kaiser on the upper west side, while several blocks north-east of here, Sweet Jessie Hogan, the Diva of Club Mecca, is sleeping off last night’s jazz? Has Miss Hogan ever sung scales? Would she put up with this?

sat —
She sings like twelve saxophones and a freight train, she wears about a pound of gold, the band just tries to keep up with her. She’s no lady. Her songs are all unbelievably unhappy or lewd. It’s called Blues. She sings about sore feet, sexual relations, baked goods, killing your lover, being broke, men called Daddy, women who dress like men, working, praying for rain. Jail and trains. Whiskey and morphine. She tells stories between verses and everyone in the place shouts out how true it all is. Imagine — the more interruptions, the higher the praise, like a
real
chorus. Picture Sweet Jessie Hogan at the Met. The best opera is just high-tone Blues.

Sun —
David said what if he gets killed in the war, he doesn’t want to die “never knowing what love is”. Translation: he doesn’t want to die a virgin. I don’t believe he was a virgin, but I was, but that’s all taken care of now. I don’t want any fella thinking he’s got anything special to “teach me” and besides, David is nice. We got a room for two hours. He said we were newlyweds but the man at the desk looked like he couldn’t care less. Well, I liked the kissing part and the next part. And I didn’t mind the rest too much but he seemed more — well, he went to the moon and I stayed here on earth. And he looked totally overcome like a sweet stupid puppy and said, “I love you.” I felt like we’d just been to two different moving pictures and didn’t know it.

Tues. —
“Do not pretend to things that are outside of your experience, Miss Pipah. If you have never suffered, do not manufacture an imitation of suffering. If you have never been in love, do not insult your listeners with cloying counterfeit.”

wed —
I think I’m in love with David. Or at least, when we’re alone together I feel like I’m in love with him. But then I don’t think about him again until I see him so can that be love? I realized something funny yesterday, I realized I haven’t even told him I’m a singer. I wonder what he thinks I do all day?

sat —
Sex is good for the voice. Why don’t they teach you that in school?

Sunday —
As for sin. I honestly can’t believe God is so bored or so lecherous as to care how close my body and its various parts get to someone else’s various parts.

Mon —
I can’t stop thinking of David you-know-how.

Tues. —
Today I got a letter from Daddy asking me if I’m okay because I haven’t written in so long, I felt so badly, I wrote right away. Not about Mecca of course. Or David. About everything else. And I sent my two pets two matching sailor-boy dolls, one for Mercedes and one for Frances.

Fri —
28
—
Today I started crying on the streetcar for no reason. It was crowded and I was looking at a little girl with dark blonde braids like my own little Frances when a pair of woman’s hands reached down to stroke the child’s hair. They were Mumma’s hands. With the soft wrinkled knuckles and the veins, and lines on the palms like blood dried in the sand. My throat got sore and I was crying before I knew it. And then I got a shock. The streetcar started to empty and I saw the woman’s face. She was a coloured woman. I am starting to not be able to picture Mumma’s face any more but I can picture her hands exactly.
“Salaam idEyyik,”
she used to say. Bless your hands.

sat —
Today Rose Lacroix was there waiting for me when I arrived and she asked me why I hadn’t been coming in early the past while. I said, “Did you miss me?” She blushed. You’d think it would be hard to tell because she’s quite dark, but it wasn’t hard at all. She wouldn’t speak to me for the rest of the day and I regretted my flippancy, but at least I finally got some sort of human response out of her. David left for France. He cried but I didn’t and that made me feel so mean so I told him I loved him. That’s not really a lie, I loved him sometimes.

Mon — July 1 —
The Queen of Sheba still won’t speak to me. Yesterday I asked if she’d like to come for a cup of coffee with me and she said, “No thank you,” and I asked her again today and she said the same thing. I said, “Why not?” And she gave me one of her haughty looks like the cat just talked to the queen and answered, “I have responsibilities.” As if I don’t have
responsibilities
. As if conquering in the footsteps of Malibran and Patti were not a responsibility. As if animating the genius of composers from Monteverdi to Puccini were child’s play. Lacroix will always have an excuse if she does not become the Paganini of the piano, but I have no such luxury.

tues —
Got my period today, thank you Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the saints.

wed —
The Kaiser says to me this morning, “Velcome back, Miss Pipah.” I haven’t been away and I said so, but he said, “Yes you have,” and that if I couldn’t be present in both body and mind from now on, he would cancel my audition. I will swear off all nocturnal ramblings until after November 12.

sat —
Working.

mon —
Working.

tues —
Got a letter from David. He asked me to marry him!! I’m going to have to write him back as nicely as possible — but really. I’d as soon marry a coal-miner. Can you picture me as a farm wife? In Montana? My God, that’s under Winnipeg! But this is what gets me: for a while I thought more about playing with David in our pee-reeking hotel room than I did about my work. I cared more about a coloured woman singing in a hundred-seat dive with a bunch of musicians who probably can’t even read music, than my own career in the greatest opera houses of the world. My father did not send me here so I could get dragged down, I could have done that at home. From now on I’m only going out to hear real music at civilized hours. What really gets me is that I never even told David I was a singer, nor did he ever ask. He doesn’t know anything about me but he’s ready to marry me!

fri — 12 —
She catches up with me on my way from the lesson and says, “You’re working too hard.” Who asked her? I pretended she hadn’t said anything. She had her chance to be friends and she wrecked it.

sat —
“Miss Piper, ze song is not your enemy.”

tues —
I have no pride. I asked Miss Music Authority what she meant by “You’re working too hard” and she enjoyed it, I could tell. She paused, just to see me writhe a little on the pin, then she said, “I have to go straight home today, but tomorrow afternoon we could go somewhere and talk.”

wed — July 17 —
She is the smartest person I have ever met! Except for Daddy. She’s not like anyone else. She doesn’t have a New York accent or a kind of Harlem southern accent. I wonder where she is from? Maybe she’s rich.