by
Helen DeWitt
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When I was at school my teachers used to get mad at me because I never did any work, & later the Fossil used to throw up his hands in horror because I’d never read Racine or Balzac or anyone like that, he’d start talking about the musician as homme cultivé — I used to say to him, If you would like me to compose an opera based on the Phèdre of M. Racine I shall be happy to examine the work in question, otherwise I have not the slightest desire to read this, I have no doubt, excellent play. This used to drive the Fossil insane. He would trot out some remark about oeuvre séminale de la littérature française, frankly it was amusing to see him boil up, well there was an element of truth in it but it was also the fact that I simply could not read more than a page — no, a sentence — without some piece of music coming into my head. I really did try to read Phèdre once & I got as far as Depuis plus de six mois éloigné de mon père, j’ignore le destin d’une tête si chère, & then all of a sudden this string quintet of Mozart’s that I had heard the night before came into my head & half an hour later it finished & I was still looking at Depuis plus de six mois éloigné de mon père, j’ignore le destin d’une tête si chère. This always happened whenever I tried to read something so I never read anything, but now it was pretty quiet in my head.
One day after walking in the country I came back & walked down her street — I heard the opening bars of Chopin’s fourth Ballade in F minor. More than ever was I conscious that I had wronged her — I felt that I must apologize — in agony I walked up and down outside the door, waiting for her to finish — double octaves in the bass melted into the air in a legato of the most perfect unhurried simplicity — I saw suddenly an insuperable difficulty. It is regarded in Japan as a common politeness to take off the shoes on entering a house — but I have always been careless of clothes, I remembered suddenly that that morning I had not been able to find any socks, that I had put on a blue and a red, each with a large hole at the big toe — I could not appear to Mlle Matsumoto like this. Like a madman I ran through the streets of Tokushima, I found a shop, I bought a pair of socks, in my mind I heard the Ballade approaching the arpeggiated chords before the end, I flung down a few yen & ran off, I darted into the precincts of a nearby shrine — no one in sight — I took off my shoes & the old socks, bundled the latter into a pocket, put on the new, put on my shoes, dashed to the house of Mlle Matsumoto. She had come to the moment of stillness before the final explosion. It came to an end — gathering my courage I knocked — she came to the door — I must speak to you, I said, you must allow me to apologize — she gestured for me to enter — I removed my shoes & followed her — we entered the room with the piano — I stood before her, every word of Japanese left my head, I poured forth my reflections of a decade & when I paused she said
Then the inconceivable had happened which is that Thom Yorke sent an e-mail inviting them to do a gig. Keith said they should just do it, fuck the fucking contract but Darren and Stewart
So then Keith was very quiet.
Never a good sign.
Given Keith’s known propensity to hit things other than drums.
So Darren said they would record the song.
Keith tried to explain his concept and Darren and Stewart kept arsing about and then Sean the keyboardist sussed that it was an arsing about session and then Keith put down his sticks.
Darren, Stewart and Sean sussed that the beat was gone.
Keith, says Darren. What the fuck.
Keith disengaged from the scaffolding of things that could be hit that made noise. He stood up.
He walked across the floor while Darren, Stewart and Sean varied the theme of What the fuck. He took the mic from Darren.
In addition to not being a songwriter Keith was not a singer. He dragged the lyrics of the song over reluctant vocal cords and spat them into the mic.
Fucking great man said Darren who did not want another guitar percussioned to subatomic particles against wall, floor, chair, his head. Yeah fucking great said Stewart who had also lost 3 guitars and Sean hastened to protect his keyboard from berserk drummer syndrome, Fucking great, insane, totally fucking crazy man
Keith handed the mic back to Darren. He turned and walked out the door.
[...] She ran into a girl who said someone had offered to pay her rent for a year. He wanted to take a photograph of this view as seen from the interior of an apartment in which someone was living in a completely natural way. All she had to do was move in and furnish it the way she would naturally. His idea was that she would be engaged in some kind of activity, ironing napkins or something like that. What he wanted was to juxtapose this ordinary, everyday activity with the traces of this steel town.
Ordinary! Everyday! She could see that the girl was completely gobsmacked.
The girl was an art student. She did not even have an iron. She did not even have paper napkins, if she had people over for a meal she would tear off paper towels. But as soon as she moved in she bought an iron and an ironing board, and she bought some cloth napkins, and if you are going to have cloth napkins maybe you need a tablecloth so she bought a matching tablecloth. And maybe she would have reverted to natural behavior, but Ivo kept saying, I just want you engaging in some ordinary, everyday activity, something like vacuuming, or dusting. So of course then she had to buy a vacuum cleaner and a dust cloth, and of course Ivo would come over to experiment with the light at different times of day so she would feel the apartment had to look presentable for the kind of person who thinks vacuuming is an everyday activity. So she became fanatical about housekeeping, she would vacuum, she would wash all the dishes and put them away, she bought a teapot and a creamer and a sugar bowl and a little tray and a glass plate for cookies.
I was no longer pleased with myself, everything seemed tarnished. I looked in the mirror and didn’t see what I would have liked to see. My blond hair had turned brown. I had a broad, squashed nose. My whole body continued to expand but without increasing in height. And my skin, too, was spoiled: on my forehead, my chin, and around my jaws, archipelagos of reddish swellings multiplied, then turned purple, finally developed yellowish tips. I began, by my own choice, to help my mother clean the house, to cook, to keep up with the mess that my brothers made, to take care of Elisa, my little sister. In my spare time I didn’t go out, I sat and read novels I got from the library: Grazia Deledda, Pirandello, Chekhov, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky. Sometimes I felt a strong need to go and see Lila at the shop and talk to her about the characters I liked best, sentences I had learned by heart, but then I let it go: she would say something mean; she would start talking about the plans she was making with Rino, shoes, shoe factory, money, and I would slowly feel that the novels I read were pointless and that my life was bleak, along with the future, and what I would become: a fat pimply salesclerk in the stationery store across from the parish church, an old maid employee of the local government, sooner or later cross-eyed and lame.
What wonderful conversations. I looked at her white, smooth skin, not a blemish. I looked at her lips, the delicate shape of her ears. Yes, I thought, maybe she’s changing, and not only physically but in the way she expresses herself. It seemed to me — articulated in words of today — that not only did she know how to put things well but she was developing a gift that I was already familiar with: more effectively than she had as a child, she took the facts and in a natural way charged them with tension; she intensified reality as she reduced it to words, she injected it with energy. But I also realized, with pleasure, that, as soon as she began to do this, I felt able to do the same, and I tried and it came easily. This — I thought contentedly — distinguishes me from Carmela and all the others: I get excited with her, here, at the very moment when she’s speaking to me. What beautiful strong hands she had, what graceful gestures came to her, what looks.
I hoped that it would pass, but inadequacy and shame intensified. Once Lila danced a waltz with her brother. They danced so well together that we left them the whole space. I was spellbound. They were beautiful, they were perfect together. As I watched, I understood conclusively that soon she would lose completely her air of a child-old woman, the way a well-known musical theme is lost when it’s adapted too fancifully. She had become shapely. Her high forehead, her large eyes that could suddenly narrow, her small nose, her cheekbones, her lips, her ears were looking for a new orchestration and seemed close to finding it. When she combed her hair in a ponytail, her long neck was revealed with a touching clarity. Her chest had small graceful breasts that were more and more visible. Her back made a deep curve before landing at the increasingly taut arc of her behind. Her ankles were still too thin, the ankles of a child; but how long before they adapted to her now feminine figure? I realized that the males, watching as she danced with Rino, were seeing more than I was. Pasquale above all, but also Antonio, also Enzo. They kept their eyes on her as if we others had disappeared. And yet I had bigger breasts. And yet Gigliola was a dazzling blonde, with regular features and nice legs. And yet Carmela had beautiful eyes and, especially, provocative movements. But there was nothing to be done: something had begun to emanate from Lila’s mobile body that the males sensed, an energy that dazed them, like the swelling sound of beauty arriving. The music had to stop before they returned to themselves, with uncertain smiles and extravagant applause.
One afternoon at the end of August we went as far as the Villa Comunale park, and sat down in a café there, because Pasquale, acting the grandee, wanted to buy everyone a spumone. At a table across from us was a family eating ice cream, like us: father, mother, and three boys between twelve and seven. They seemed respectable people: the father, a large man, in his fifties, had a professorial look. And I can swear that Lila wasn’t showing off in any way: she wasn’t wearing lipstick, she had on the usual shabby dress that her mother had made — the rest of us were showing off more, Carmela especially. But that man — this time we all realized it — couldn’t take his eyes off her, and Lila, although she tried to control herself, responded to his gaze as if she couldn’t get over being so admired. Finally, while at our table the discomfort of Rino, of Pasquale, of Antonio increased, the man, evidently unaware of the risk he ran, rose, stood in front of Lila, and, addressing the boys politely, said:
“You are fortunate: you have here a girl who will become more beautiful than a Botticelli Venus. I beg your pardon, but I said it to my wife and sons, and I felt the need to tell you as well.”
Lila burst out laughing because of the strain. The man smiled in turn, and, with a small bow, was about to return to his table when Rino grabbed him by the collar, forced him to retrace his steps quickly, sat him down hard, and, in front of his wife and children, unloaded a series of insults of the sort we said in the neighborhood. Then the man got angry, the wife, yelling, intervened, Antonio pulled Rino away. Another Sunday ruined.
“She was so smart, you couldn’t keep up with her, she made my head a blur.”
He said it just that way—she made my head a blur—and if at first I had been a little disappointed because he had said that his declaration of love had been only an attempt to introduce himself into my and Lila’s relationship, this time I suffered in an obvious way, I felt a real pain in my chest.
“She’s not like that anymore,” I said. “She’s changed.”
And I felt an urge to add, “Have you heard how the teachers at school talk about me?” Luckily I managed to restrain myself. But, after that conversation, I stopped writing to Lila: I had trouble telling her what was happening to me, and anyway she wouldn’t answer. I devoted myself instead to taking care of Nino. I knew that he woke up late and I invented excuses of every sort not to have breakfast with the others. I waited for him, I went to the beach with him, I got his things ready, I carried them, we went swimming together. But when he went out to sea I didn’t feel able to follow, I returned to the shoreline to watch apprehensively the wake he left, the dark speck of his head. I became anxious if I lost him, I was happy when I saw him return. In other words I loved him and knew it and was content to love him.
I looked at that man and thought: he and his son have not even a feature in common. Nino is tall, he has a delicate face, the forehead buried under black hair, the mouth always half-closed, with inviting lips; Donato instead is of average height, his features are pronounced, he has a receding hairline, his mouth is compact, almost without lips. Nino has brooding eyes that see beyond things and persons and seem to be frightened; Donato has a gaze that is always receptive, that adores the appearance of every thing or person and is always smiling on them. Nino has something that’s eating him inside, like Lila, and it’s a gift and a suffering; they aren’t content, they never give in, they fear what is happening around them; this man, no, he appears to love every manifestation of life, as if every lived second had an absolute clarity.