“Hey, composer man, I better get the hell out of here before your wife comes back.”
After Aspasia had gone, my gonads glowing, I opened up the window to let some nice new fresh fumes come from the passing traffic. For some days I had been further intensifying my study of the fugue. And taking deep solace listening to my heroes in the world of music. Especially the great swelling melodic choruses of Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass. Which I had once traveled to Paris to hear when it was being performed in the church of Saint Sulpice. A sacredly remembered day in my life. The waves of sound and voices still sweeping through my brain and throbbing in my ears even as I would walk along a noisy avenue. And heard myself saying, “Praise be to you, Gounod.”
And then opening up the window even wider, I played the record and turned up the volume. The orchestral sounds and the voices of Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass thundering out again to the uninitiated passing in the street. Not a goddamn person ever notices. How dare they be uncomprehending and not stop and listen. How dare they not let their souls be uplifted with the sound. Push up the window even wider. Further turn up the volume. Shout Gounod, Gounod out over the street. Listen, you bastards. The choral voices are roaring “Sanctus dominus, sanctus dominus.” And you, you philistine fucker in the lumber jacket on the curb with your big stomach sticking out. Who the fuck do you think you’re shouting at.
“Hey, somebody call Bellevue, will yuh. A guy’s gone crazy up there in the window.”
“Fuck you, you infidel barbarian scoffer. Get out of here before I come down there and bust you one.”
A little group had formed and a gang of kids collected. As well as the passing garbagemen, who stopped. Even one who had his face busily buried in the Wall Street Journal studying his investments, looked up. Lean out, shake my fist. Could make me look like someone who can’t take this city anymore. And lead to maybe any second an ambulance or paddy wagon coming to take me away to a padded cell in that building euphemistically referred to as “Bellevue,” with barred windows on the East River. Or if I bust one of these bastards in the face. Or worse if they shoot me, take me to Bellevue morgue, where the hundreds of bodies lie unclaimed. Sylvia could identify me on two sides. Either with the scars she’s left on my arse. Or by the size of my Irish big prick.
“No need to roll him over. That’s him.”
The hopeless obtuseness of it all. Except for the advent of Aspasia, how can one’s creative desires be unleashed to soar. The indifference to be found in this city has no equal. Makes you want to jump from the Brooklyn Bridge into the murky East River waters. Instead, all you can do is weep. Boo-hoo. But then one might as a pedestrian venture somewhere in the city and pass, totally out of the blue, some roving minstrel which would restore hope and optimism. Only yesterday I was elated as I stopped to listen to a man playing the concluding bars of Giovanni Pergolesi’s Concerti Armonici for strings. The quality of the playing astounded. And one was inspired by the total fortuity and happenstance. I removed my cap and swept it in a bow at the last fading chord. And although I could not afford it, I dropped half a dollar in this outstanding instrumentalist’s hat.
And this day as I was about to slam the window shut and go down and beat the shit out of the infidel barbarian scoffer, suddenly the music stopped. Just at the words “Benedictus nomine domini” sang out and ended, “hosanna in excelsis.” I turned around and there was Sylvia. Standing there in the middle of her exercise space in her flowing mink coat. Hands on her hips, lower lip tightly drawn across her mouth, and surveying me.”
“Who’s been here.”
“What do you mean, ‘who’s been here.’”
“I mean, whose goddamn cheap nasty perfume am I smelling. The bed is broken. Blankets on the floor. Those are teeth marks on your neck.”
“I was having a nap and a nightmare. And the marks are legitimate indentations caused by my own fingernails dug into the skin.”
“Like hell you were having a nightmare. Hanging out the window and music blasting out all over the street and I had to sneak in the downstairs door.”
“I was dealing with uncouth infidels.”
“You were dealing in the bedroom with some bitch who has been here. Look at this, big sloppy gobs of lipstick on a cigarette.”
“Well, I don’t want you to assume that I am the composer of the hour but if you must know, it was an opera singer auditioning. Someone who is to sing soprano in Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass at St. Bartholomew’s Church, where there is a very good chance I may be invited to conduct. Its parish has a musically discriminating and sophisticated congregation.”
“You fucking liar, you couldn’t conduct your way backing assward out of a wet, broken paper bag. You couldn’t even meet a raving queer conductor to kiss his ass and get somewhere, as he didn’t turn up.”
“Hey, you just wait a minute. I’ve been dealing with enough graceless reprobates in the street and other hindrances in my musical work to want to hear any more crap. Why don’t you just go back to Sutton Place and stay there.”
Horns honking down in the street in a traffic jam, as Sylvia, her fur coat flying open, pulled off the wooden arm of the broken chair and sent it sailing across the room. The piece of walnut shined with elbows, bouncing off my upraised arm with the sound of something that could be broken. Or something so goddamn bruised, it was beyond being used for squeezing again. As she huffs off through the kitchen, sweeping pots and dishes from the shelves, dismounts a pan cooking on the stove, and disappears into the bedroom. More sounds of flying objects and breaking glass. Life, as it does with a moment of bliss and promiscuous carnality, conspires then to bring every goddamn worry upon you. Not only attempted murder and a possible fractured arm but also the clap. Or worse, the syph. Or some other goddamn fatal affliction. That I may, if I’ve now got it, now give. Cerebral anguish that would drive you into buying a television set. Or attempting to climb a tree or get into heaven. Or best of all, to go get a ticket on a ship back to Europe. But she’s back before I can even get out the door.
“That’s right, look at me with your amazed look, Chopin.”
“Why the hell did you do an unladylike thing as that. Potatoes that I was boiling, all over the floor.”
“Since I’ve paid for everything in here, why not. After all, it’s merely the sort of primitive peasant vegetable your ancestors used to dig out of the ground.”
“Hey, you cut out that ethnic slander.”
“It happens to be an anthropological fact. I may have engaged in consensual gang-banging in my time, but you’re not going to bring someone into where I live to
screw.”
Holy Christ, she stands there readmitting her carnal past. Knowing of the wounding it gives and the sour wrench of distrust it sends convoluting through one’s guts. When such should be interred to remain in her graveyard of memory. In which it probably won’t be long before the indiscretions of yours truly reside. But I was a total innocent victim of an unpremeditated carnal incident, whereas women always plot and plan and always like having a few reserve pricks they can fall back on, even when the present one they’re enjoying stimulates them. And they never forget a shape or size. Plus, the more pricks hanging out around them nearby, all the better. I want similar freedom. And not be a poor innocent who encounters a moment of healthy carnal gaiety and ends up suffering a dusting-over and the apartment gets visited upon it even worse. Such goings-on could predict that one might never again have peace on earth. Never again see Aspasia’s big innocent doe eyes, hear her pleasantly raucous laughter, or feel her silken soft lips or incredible elliptically enticing tits.
“I want to know who the hell you had in here.”
“I’ve already explained I am auditioning.”
“Yeah. To fuck somebody. What’s the shade doing down in the bedroom.”
“How dare you impugn my professionalism and make such a crass and entirely unfounded accusation.”
“Boy, you sure can be a real hoot sometimes.”
&nbs
p; Sylvia returning to the bedroom. Closet doors slamming. A suitcase flung on the broken bed. Holy cow. She’s just pulled the godamn shade down off its roller. What kind of a disagreeably goddamn future is this. After the warmth of a so freely giving, soft enveloping Aspasia. So wonderfully conspicuous in her red hat and silver-fox collar. And so stunningly naked in her shiny dark skin. Black enough to provoke white racial slurs against us in this bigoted land. As I hunger and yearn now to hear some Gregorian chant the Adorate Deum of the Introitus. The faster I get up to St. Bartholomew’s Church in a hurry, the better. Where I have often gone to quietly listen to their choir. Now knock on the rector’s door. Please, will Your Esteemed Graciousness allow me to conduct old Charlie Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass in your most beautiful Byzantine church. Of such richly salmon-colored brick and Indiana limestone that it stands as an oasis in the sea of glass and exaggerated modernity hereabouts on Park Avenue. Vouchsafe that I be able to approach through your elegant bronze doors depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments. My baton polished and ready. The New York Philharmonic and your church’s choir ready to enjoin in rapturous harmony, and Aspasia to make her guest appearance. Just as Sylvia makes hers clearly on her way somewhere.
“Where are you going with that suitcase.”
“None of your fucking business. I’m leaving. Lover boy. Out of this hellhole and removing myself perhaps even farther away.”
“Have you no regard for someone telling the gospel truth.”
“That word gospel should be bullshit. And big-time conductor and Romeo, if you want to go on with that phony story, it’s best you know that it just so happens that my nonbiological mother and father are members of St. Bartholomew’s congregation, with their name reasonably readable on a pew. And I’ve been there more than a couple of dozen times, to perhaps be reminded that maybe my real parents were Jewish, Italian, or who knows, God forbid, even Irish and that I was lucky to be allowed in the church.”
“I’ll overlook that inference to being Irish, but it’s eminently understandable that your mother and father should want to indoctrinate you to religion.”
“Don’t you ever, ever call them my mother and father. Do you hear me. Never. They’re not my mother and father. Whom I am forced to adopt as parents. They’re my goddamn adopted mother and father. My real mother and father are someone else.”
“Forgive me. For clearly, as one might aver in French, j’ais commis un impair.”
“And don’t give me any of your fucking fractured French, either.”
“I have merely said in entirely linguistically correct French that I’ve made a tactless blunder in conversation.”
“And maybe that right now reminds me that I’ve made a blunder in marriage. I’m tired of not having any money while you take solace in the so-called great music of the so-called great composers, which seems to provide you with a curtain of insulation to shut out the unseemliness in your life, like a landlord coming around here pestering for rent while he’s trying to make passes at me. And by the way, I bought and paid for that Gounod record, not you.”
“Are you finished.”
“No, I’m not. Away from here, I won’t have to listen to any more of your bullshit. That one day you shall be richly recompensed standing on the podium in front of your awaiting orchestra in Carnegie Hall. Ready to receive Rubenstein. Who comes onstage with a roar of clapping, and, as he sits at the piano, the audience suddenly silent, he holds out his arms and then, at the anointment of your baton, with a flourish of his fingers descends to the keyboard to begin O’Kelly’O’s Nocturne Number One.”
“How the fuck do you presume to know how Rubenstein’s fingers will descend to the keyboard.”
“I don’t. But to such an unlikely event you can bet I’ll wear my tiara. Just make sure on the occasion your big cock is not hanging out. If whoever was here is in the audience, they might want to rush onto the podium to give you a blow job.”
“I reject your vulgar aspersion as grossly insulting.”
“What’s vulgar about sucking an old-fashioned prick. You’re so goddamn prudish. Meanwhile, I’d really still like to know what, between your big-deal concerts you conduct with equanimity in your imagination, you’ll be doing for food, since my adopted father, who may never have been guilty of doing a generous thing but sure knows how to live on other people’s money, refuses to donate to the furtherance of your career.”
“I shall emulate the tradition already established by many of the great classical composers who precede me and who without patronage have had to diet.”
“Well, one thing is certain. My adopted father could be accused of doing the stingy thing but never be accused of doing a stupid thing, like giving handouts to jerk-offs.”
“Who do you think you are to talk to me like that.”
“Oh, you’re not going to give me a punch in the jaw.”
“I have never struck a woman in my life, but maybe I might start.”
“Well, Mr. Potential Wife Beater, you just try it. My adoptive father was right when he said you were given to pedantic speak.”
“Well, in any kind of speak you want and in any language you want, you can anytime you want to get the hell out of here.”
“Well, I am. But just remember, I did once in a while try to be accommodating to your career. You could have gone as I suggested to see that rich lady I know living up in the top of the Hampshire House on Central Park South. Who could have been a help. But composers, for God’s sake, half of them are queer cocksuckers or deaf neurotics or both. Not that there is anything wrong with healthy God-fearing cock sucking. I mean, who’s to know for certain if those notes you’re scribbling over there are ever even going to get heard, never mind change the world. So far, all your musical compositions have done is lose me my allowance. The only one who seems impressed by your being a composer is my eye-winking adopted mother, who by the way, before I got here, asked me to ask you to come for a drink at the apartment, which is why I’m here, and if you want to take the trouble to change your clothes, I’m supposed to bring you there. You might even get a free meal of it.”
Horns stopped honking in the street. Sylvia waiting in the strange silence for an answer. Look out the window. A policeman directing traffic around a stalled car. Sylvia cleaning up the mess of my potatoes. Arguments seem to end as suddenly as they begin. But leaving me still suspected and unforgiven. Every clash between us always revealing some new fact of her life. Bitter to be adopted. Are her real parents maybe immigrant. And maybe even worse than Irish, Italian or Jewish. Without estates or trust funds. Ghetto dwellers in their litter-strewn streets. But who, if only they could have a chance to listen, could have respect if not love, for great music. And for whom I can and must win. Against all the adversarial odds. Rise up to be recognized out of the thousands of composers in this city alone. In their studios, testing notes on oboes, pianos, and harps. Hold tight to my nerve. Tinkle my harpsichord. Struggle on. I will change my clothes. Look respectable. Head uptown on First Avenue in a taxi to see my adopted mother-in-law. Maybe humming a song I’ve just thought of.
How deep is your affection
Tell me soon so I’ll know
Is it skin-deep, oceans-deep
Or shallow like a piece of glass
As darkness attempts to descend upon this city, the lights as they always do, light and glow back up high into the sky. And I did go try impromptu again to meet the lady in the top of the Hampshire House, but they wouldn’t let me in without an appointment. Even though their attitude suggested that by the look of me it was inconceivable that I might try and steal one of her valuable paintings. And now on the corner of Canal and Mulberry streets, a yellow-and-black-and-white Checker cab squealing to a stop. Sylvia, minus her suitcase, climbing in. As I follow. The destination eliciting a preferred polite attitude from the driver. His ears alive to the silence of our conversation. Up and over to First Avenue. Through the Gashouse District, once a neighborhood of shabbiness and grime where the
Irish once lived later joined by the Germans and Jews. At Twenty-sixth Street, passing by block after block, the massive grim complex of Bellevue Hospital. Treating the sick and injured, who on stretchers pour in its doors. And where, along its massive corridors, the dead under their white sheets are wheeled away into the cold silence of the morgue in there beyond the windows. Without a relative or friend, unmourned, get given to a private embalming school for practice. No sorrow so deep nor anguish so torn. The living screams inside the barred psychiatric wards. Where each face must desperately look to find a kindly smile. The kidney of New York ridding the city of its waste. A derrick lowering unclaimed bodies and amputated arms and legs into a barge moored on the river. Taking them to Hart Island for burial in a pauper’s grave beneath the legend HE CALLETH HIS CHILDREN BY NAME.
The taxi turning into these emptier streets, where the rich live on Sutton Place. And other socialites calleth by telephone. The windows of the buildings polished, gleaming. The acolyte doormen who adorn their entrance lobbies. In this my city. My town. My streets. Where I was born and grew up. Defiled by these pretentious interlopers with their sacks of gold hidden somewhere, who use precious space as a dormitory to come and occasionally play in. I detoured one day up the wide steps of the New York Public Library to find out more. And, heels clicking along its great marble halls, went to inquire how this street we now headed for had achieved its mystique of becoming such a bastion for the elite. Where the residents came to sit in quiet composure to defecate and ladies to urinate in the carved marble toilet bowls. In the vast reading room of the library and sitting an hour at a desk, I read in the pages of The New York City Guide for 1939 that this so unobtrusively situated location on a rocky high overlooking the swift-flowing East River was named after Effingham Sutton, an owner of a line of clipper ships. Here the East River briefly widened and yachts were moored, and the slum children came to swim from a wooden pier at the end of this dead-end street.