My Heart Laid Bare Part 33

Yes I was brazen, and will remain so.

No I have no shame as you know shame. And want none.

So with the pa.s.sage of time Darian Licht would tell himself. Yet on the evening of his disastrous debut as a composer, he feels little such confidence. At the age of twenty-eight he is a very young man, virginal in most respects: his pride has been stung as by a swarm of angry hornets.

Worse yet, Darian will have to return to the Westheath School knowing that those senior faculty members who'd disappoved of his Carnegie Hall debut, under the sponsorship of elderly Mrs. Frick, would believe their judgment vindicated. To his face, they'd wished him well; but made excuses for being unable to attend the recital in Manhattan. "Of course, it's but the debut," they told Darian with seemingly sincere faces. "Your Lost Village will surely be played many times, in America at least!"

In his rented apartment in an old mansion in Schenectady there are numerous such compositions, several of greater ambition than Esopus; which Darian in despair that his vision ("If vision be the word, and not rather madness") will ever be realized. Not even his two or three musical friends know how many pieces of music Darian Licht has attempted since early adolescence. More than twenty are formally complete, like Esopus, and await performance; dozens remain in sketchy form-sonatas, string quartets and quintets, miniature symphonies ("Silence: Dusk" is eight minutes long); elegies, marches, nocturnes, madrigals, cantatas; "letters"-"impressions"-"reveries." The compositions are scored for all variety of musical instruments and many instruments (pebbles, gla.s.s beaker, crackling flame, washboard) not ordinarily considered musical. There is an opera for forty-eight voices, including the voices of children, animals and the dead, unt.i.tled and uncompleted after fifteen years, which would present the life of a village (like Muirkirk) for an intense twenty-four-hour period.

All that I'd lost was not lost. Wayward motions of the soul. Like wood smoke rising, our lives . . . our music.

AT THE TIME of his notorious Manhattan debut, Darian Licht is in his third year as "visiting instructor" at the Westheath School of Music in Schenectady, a school of regional distinction and ambition under the aggressive directorship of a former musical prodigy and composer named Myrick Sheffield. Among his circle of friends and admirers, Sheffield is considered an American musical genius, unfairly unrecognized in New York City; his compositions are lavishly romantic, in the flamboyant style of his master Franz Liszt; as a pianist he's a dynamo of keyboard virtuosity, ponderously sentimental, showy and imprecise. The very ant.i.thesis of Darian Licht: yet Sheffield hired Darian with the shrewd knowledge that for a low salary, and no contract from year to year, he could acquire a brilliantly talented young music teacher with little thought of academic achievement and financial security. "Attractive to women as he is, Licht is blind to his own attractions. His s.e.x is all in his head: his music. He will never marry and will never need much money. He neither knows nor cares of his own worth. And I will be the judge of that worth, to Westheath"-so Sheffield has publicly boasted. Though he's fond of the younger man, too; perceiving him as a rival, yet a worthy rival to be bested. (Sheffield would be more jealous of Darian Licht if he knew how the more advanced Westheath students have made a cult of Darian Licht and his musical theories which, while incomprehensible, and perhaps mad, have the force of being contrary to most of what is taught at the school.) It's true that Darian is blind to his own attractiveness, and therefore blind to the attractiveness of women. Where one can't take seriously the objects of desire, desire itself has little force; or, if it has force, its potency has burrowed underground, like certain fires that burn undetected, beneath the surface of the earth, for years. And there is the model, the monster-model, of Abraham Licht the lover of women, pitiless and absurd seeker of Venus Aphrodite in mortal women; that voracious and insatiable appet.i.te Darian can't think of without a shudder. "Do I hate the man, still?" Darian asks himself, twisting his lower lip between thumb and forefinger hard enough to hurt. "But why should I, Darian, hate him now?-we're nothing to each other, now."

Darian keeps up his contact with Esther, of course; for Esther is an avid letter-writer, and devoted to him. Through Esther he has news of Millie (whom he last saw in 1921 when Millie and new husband Warren Stirling were visiting in Boston, at the time Darian was briefly hired to teach composition and piano at the New England Conservatory) and Katrina (who remains in Muirkirk, a keeper of the old church-residence, now empty of Lichts). Always he will remain estranged from Abraham Licht-he's certain. And Abraham on his side has made no attempt to contact Darian since December 1916.

What's past but the graveyard of future. And no place to dwell.

Yet sometimes, in those feverish insomniac states that make the writing of music so exhausting, if exhilarating, Darian lapses into a waking dream at the keyboard and sees Father approaching him, all smiles and stooped for an embrace; Darian is a child again, yearning and dreading Father's rough, smothering hug; the heat of his hard kiss; the warmth of his tobacco-whiskey breath. Hearing Father's ringing words that are a summons to his soul, the sweetest, most piercing music Where will ye fly little birdies, Old Sir Ebeneezer Snuff knows y'r name, Old Ebeneezer Snuff sees all in Heaven, and Earth, and the Darksome Regions Beneath with his one almighty eye.

Since childhood he'd been told he had a weak heart but who had told him this but Father? He doubted it was true.

Though sometimes he was short of breath. A stranger's chill hand, fingers spread, pressing against his chest.

Yet he was physically fit: not strong, not muscular but lean, lithe, hardy, stubborn. His best musical ideas came to him while hiking, for miles in the rock-strewn foothills; tramping through winter fields, freezing gusts of air whining about his bent head. After he'd quit the Vanderpoel Academy Darian had wandered for months . . . years. Northward, westward through New York State and looping around, in a southerly direction, below the Great Lakes; working variously as a Western Union messenger boy, a printer's a.s.sistant, an icehouse employee (until his breathlessness forced him to quit), even as a handyman in a boardinghouse in Oxard, Ohio, in which he roomed for $7 a week. He offered himself as an itinerant music teacher, his speciality piano and organ; he was a choir director for a Presbyterian church in Flint, Indiana; he tried his hand at piano-tuning. He hitched rides with travelers headed west; risked injury riding the rails, in boxcars in the company of homeless, sometimes desperate men. In Needham, Minnesota, he remained for nearly a year, working in the post office and living in a cheap hotel near the train depot and giving much of his spare time to Colonel Harris's Needham Silver Cornet Band under whose spell he'd fallen hearing the vigorous playing of these sixteen men one summer evening in the town green. What music is this? Who is calling to me? Back in the East he'd fallen temporarily under the spell, knowing it was a malevolent spell, of Arnold Schoenberg, whose Five Pieces for Orchestra had penetrated his soul; only hearing Colonel Harris's band had cleansed his head, or so he would swear. Can one fall in love with a band? a music? a sound? This bra.s.s band was composed of men between the ages of twenty-two and eighty-one who played with an extraordinary degree of enthusiasm and energy such instruments as the E-flat cornet, the B-flat cornet, the alto, the tenor, the baritone, the tuba, the ba.s.s drum, the snare drum, the slide trombone and the mighty sousaphone. Darian lacked sufficient wind as well as training to play any of the horns, but the Colonel gave him a snare drum which he played when he marched with the band, shyly at first, then with more confidence. "Don't be afraid of making noise, son," the Colonel advised, "-to get people to listen to good music you first have to capture their attention."

The hardy little band marched as frequently as well-wishers and admirers would have them, or perhaps more frequently. They were a legend of sorts in Needham, a small city otherwise not known for musical ambition. Of course, the Colonel, long retired from the U.S. Army, was the driving force, the soul of the band; either you were an unquestioning instrument in his imagination, or you were not likely to remain long in the Silver Cornet Band. Military marches, quicksteps, polkas, schottisches, the national anthem, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" . . . " All Quiet Along the Potomac" . . . "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" . . . the Colonel's transcriptions of "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny," "The Band Played On," "Peg o' My Heart" . . . even "Adieu! 'Tis Love's Last Greeting," "Gaily Through Life I Wander," "The Angel's Whisper." Darian, marching with the men, banging on his drum until his arms and hands ached, felt a thrill previously unknown to him, that music might be performed in the open air; that music might be greeted with noisy, hearty applause, cheers and whistles, by men, women and children who would never have tolerated a concert of "serious" music. And most of all the music moved through both s.p.a.ce and time: you didn't sit, nor even stand, you marched.

And wasn't Darian drawn to the band, and to the strong personality of Colonel Harris (brisk, stout, genial and quarrelsome by turns, with a drink-flushed face and white tobacco-stained drooping moustache) because here was a version, not wicked but benign, of Abraham Licht. Father not-Father.

In the end, though, Darian left Needham, Minnesota. For even happiness can wear out; even happiness is not the quest.

"But you are happy?-you look happy," Millicent said with a half-accusing ring to her honeyed voice. "You haven't changed," she said, smiling as she lied, "-nearly at all."

Darian laughed. "I can't believe that," he said.

"That you're happy-?"

"That I haven't changed."

"-When I have, so greatly, you mean to say!" Millicent brightly exclaimed.

And reached across the tea things to rap at his hand with her pretty lacquered fingernails. Darian caught, not for the first time since she'd removed her gloves, a flash of her rings.

This beautiful woman in the silver cloche hat, thirty years old, lips subtly colored, her steely-blue eyes fixed upon his with a disconcerting intensity-was she really Darian's sister Millie whom he'd once adored?

Millie teased, asking him another time if she'd changed-"For the better, I hope?" All the while, her eyelids quivered as if she might be fighting back tears.

(Millie had already wept at their meeting, in Darian's boardinghouse as her husband looked uneasily on. Darian, resisting emotion, had embraced his perfumed sister fondly, yet slightly stiffly. What is it we want from each other, what do we imagine we can give?) Now that Millicent had made what appeared to be a very good marriage, and had moved away to live in Richmond, Virginia, she was, as Esther had warned him, a woman of the South; of superior breeding and culture; so a.s.sured of her background and her present social status she could afford the mild self-deprecatory airs Darian had noted in those cla.s.smates of his at Vanderpoel who were from the most legendary old families. (Though Millie's husband Warren wasn't a Virginian by birth, Darian gathered, but was in fact from upstate New York.) Edgy, chattering, alternately sipping tea and lighting up one of her cigarettes (her brand was Omar, a "Turkish" tobacco), she seemed, even as she asked Darian about himself, to be drawing back; maintaining a vigilance he'd a.s.sumed would disappear when they were alone together, out of Warren Stirling's company. Almost wistfully she asked him another time if he was happy, so far from home, among strangers; and Darian said, annoyed, that there was no reason for him not to be happy. He wasn't a child any longer: he was twenty-one years old.

"And aren't we all, the Lichts, happiest among strangers?" Darian asked.

Millie stared; said nothing; after a moment stubbed out her cigarette, and reached into her beaded handbag for another.

Against a stately background of palm fronds, wicker and black marble and ceiling-high mirrors, Mrs. Warren Stirling's blond enameled beauty shone to dramatic effect. She was wearing a fashionable smocklike dress in crimson jersey wool with a satin waistline dropped to the hips; the silver cloche hat, fitting her head tightly, seemed to be compressing it, into a stylish and hurtful sort of innocence. By contrast with his glamorous older sister Darian knew himself shabby in a mismatched jacket and trousers and a tieless shirt, open at the collar. While Millie who was Mrs. Millicent Stirling seemed fully at home in the elegant tearoom of the Hotel Ritz-Carlton, though the place was as new to her as to Darian, he felt ungainly and unwanted, like a homeless drifter who'd wandered into the wrong setting. He devoured too many of the tiny crustless sandwiches and slopped his English tea into his saucer. Saying, enigmatically, "Yet we are brother and sister, y'know, Millie-I mean, we have the same father. Or had."

Millie stared at him, startled. "Why do you say that? Why say such a thing?"

Darian shrugged. What he meant, d.a.m.ned if he knew.

Millie pretended that nothing was wrong, that her reunion with her youngest brother was proceeding with the bright brisk animation of a reunion scene in a bittersweet melodrama; there was emotional strain, but all would turn out in the end. In her role as affluent older sister, a much-loved married woman with life br.i.m.m.i.n.g in the wings, she plied Darian with questions until he grew more and more taciturn. Why had he broken off relations with Father; how had he come to be on the staff at the New England Conservatory-"Which Warren's aunt says is very prestigious"; did he visit Muirkirk; did he miss Muirkirk; did he approve of Esther's nursing career; did he truly believe he might make a living in music-teaching, performing, composing? Thoughtfully she said, as if the words pained her, "Darian, what a precarious life! The world sees only 'stars' and knows nothing of the gifted, even inspired musicians, actors, artists who try, and try, and try-and fail. Because there are too many of us." She laughed, exhaling bluish smoke. "I mean-of you."

Darian shrugged, slopping more tea into his saucer. His heart pounded in dislike of his newfound sister.

As if there were too many Darian Lichts.

Next, Millie asked him if he'd ever been in love, or if there was anyone whom he loved now-"I mean, you know, in a romantic sense." Her voice was conspicuously Southern by now. Again Darian shrugged, not liking so personal a question; and embarra.s.sed, and resentful, not knowing how to reply. He hoped never to succ.u.mb to mere romance. He hoped he was superior to childish, primitive cravings. "Possibly," he said. "If ever I become that bored." Millie laughed, uncomfortably. Darian was recalling why he'd felt resentful of Millie, even as he'd missed her: he'd written several songs for soprano voice, for her, as a part of his Muirkirk opera cycle, and sent them to her by way of Esther, but she'd never responded. He'd known that she'd received them because she'd told Esther she had. Like Thurston, like Elisha-Millie had gone away, and forgotten him.

Like a magician Millie was extracting from her silver lame purse a packet of photographs which she pa.s.sed over to Darian. Most were of her baby-"Maynard Franklin Stirling. Your nephew, Darian." Darian found himself moved by the baby's sweet, quizzical face and startled expression. He didn't want to think the baby resembled, ever so slightly, his mother's father. Millie said defiantly, "He's something!-he's real."

Darian acknowledged, yes it was so. Nothing more real than a baby created out of one's mortal flesh. "You're happy, then, Millie. You've crossed over."

"Yes." Millie spoke with satisfaction, taking the photographs back from Darian and checking them, severely, as if she feared one might be missing, or in some way altered; then dropping them into her purse and snapping it shut. There. That's that! Darian sensed how she'd been preparing to ask a question long contemplated, and now plunged into it, more nervously than she wished-"You've lost contact with Elisha, I suppose. You never hear of him or from him-I suppose."

Darian shook his head, sadly.

There was an awkward pause. Darian, not looking at Millie, could hear her quickened breathing; he imagined her close to breaking into sobs. Her grief wouldn't be pure but a grief of loss and anger.

Like a spoiled Virginia matron Millie called to the waiter to bring more hot water for their tea. Even with the tea cozy, their tea had become lukewarm.

In a honeyed voice saying to him, as if this were an old quarrel, and Darian quite the crank for failing to come round to common sense, "I s'pose you haven't respect for composers like Verdi, Rossini, Bellini . . . and who was it wrote The Bohemian Girl . . . Gilbert and Sullivan? And Richard Wagner." She p.r.o.nounced the name with the precise German inflection, "Rick-ard," as Abraham Licht had done.

"Wagner, certainly," Darian said shortly.

"And the others are-old-fashioned? Too easy, too pleasurable to the ear?"

"Too boring, I would have said."

"Well! Boring is in the ear of the beholder, I would have said."

"And so you have. And very clearly."

Millie's bee-stung, perfectly painted lips twitched in a smile. He knew she was feeling the sting of discovering her shy young brother not so young any longer, and not so shy. She said, pouring more tea for them both, with a frowning sort of concentration that marred her smooth forehead, "But you must, you know. Eventually. 'Love'-'fall in love.' You may scorn romance, but your music, without it, will be superficial." When Darian refused to rise to this bait, Millie changed the subject, and asked after his finances. "Are you poor as your clothes, your haircut and that rooming house suggest, or are you, like the proverbial bohemian artist, indifferent to material things? The way you've devoured these little sandwiches! If you need money, Darian, I'll be happy to . . . lend you some. That is, Warren will. I know you're too proud to accept an outright gift. But-" She made a movement to open her silver lame purse again, but was deterred by Darian's look of disdain.

"Millie, thank you. But I don't need your money."

"Ah! I've offended you."

"Not at all. I think I've offended you."

Millie who was Mrs. Warren Stirling with her flashing rings and bright, knowing smile said accusingly, "Darian, you loved me once, in Muirkirk. When he was our father. Is that it? But now-everything has changed. You have changed, and I suppose that I have. And so you've ceased to love your 'pretty'-'doomed'-sister."

"'Doomed'? Why?"

Millie laughed. Adjusting the smart cloche hat on her head, with a small violent gesture. Darian saw her gaze fixed beyond his shoulder and, following it, caught sight of his sister's floating oval face in a wall mirror a short distance away. And there was his own face, narrow and blurred as a face glimpsed from the window of a speeding train. Had Millie been watching herself all along, in a pretext of watching him? "d.a.m.ned, maybe," Millie said. Darian looked at her uncomprehending. "Your 'pretty'-'d.a.m.ned'-sister, I might have said."

Soon it would be time to leave. Darian seemed to know beforehand how he would miss Millie; how he would rage at himself for letting this opportunity pa.s.s, without taking his sister's hands in his and telling her he loved her. He said, fumbling, "D'you ever hear of Thurston?" and Millie quickly shook her head, no. "He is alive, isn't he?" Darian asked, and again Millie shook her head, this time to indicate she didn't know. She shivered; she was warming her hands on the teapot, in a gesture Darian remembered from many years ago in Muirkirk, when tendrils of wind came whistling through cracks in the windows and skeins of frost glittered on the panes in blinding, yet freezing sunshine. Darian said stubbornly, "I believe that Thurston is alive. And that we'll see him again-someday." Millie shrugged, and wiped at her eyes. In the doorway of the tearoom Warren Stirling stood hesitantly, looking in their direction. Millie had asked him to join them after twenty minutes or so and now, uncertainly smiling, he approached their table; a tall, slightly stocky man of youthful middle age. He'd served as an Army colonel in the Great War and had been wounded in northern France; he'd nearly died of exposure and later of infection; he'd told Millie that in a state of delirium he'd seen her face-that is, the face of the "La.s.s of Aviemore" he'd confused with hers. "As if I, Millie, who knew so little how to save her own life, could have saved his"-so Millie had confided in Darian, with an expression of half-shamed wonder.

Quickly, before Warren came within earshot, Millie seized Darian's hand, caressed the long, powerful pianist's fingers and murmured in a thrilled undertone, "Thurston is alive. Only no longer 'Thurston.' He came to visit Warren and me in Richmond, and gave us his blessing. But Harwood-is dead."

"What? Dead-?"

It was a taut dramatic moment, precisely timed. For Darian's gentlemanly brother-in-law was pulling out a chair to sit at their lacquered table, and such confidential exchanges must cease. "May I join you? You're sure you don't mind?"-Warren Stirling smiled at Darian. A genial, kindly man, an ideal husband for Millie and an ideal father for her children, who no more knew her than he knew Darian. The expression in his warm mud-brown eyes as he gazed at beautiful Millicent in her cloche hat and pretty clothes told all: to be the object of another's adoration is to be blessed.

SO: HARWOOD WAS dead! Cruel Harwood Licht.

When Darian's half brother had died; and how; and where; whether of natural or unnatural causes; whether deservedly, or undeservedly-Darian Licht in his innocence was never to know.

The twenty-third of May 1928. Near midnight. Darian Licht has returned alone to his room at the shabby Empire State Hotel on Eighth Avenue, where a number of his fellow Schenectady musicians are also staying, when there's a loud rap at the door; and Darian, in his shirt-sleeves, hurries to answer thinking it might be Thurston-though knowing it can't be Thurston, of course. "Yes? What?" Darian cries. He pauses to stare at himself in a sc.u.mmy mirror; irritably brushes his hair out of his face, an alarmingly flushed, mottled, haggard young face, and makes a stab at adjusting his clothing. Since the nightmare recital and the shock of meeting Thurston, and at once losing Thurston, Darian has dropped by several taverns on the way back to the hotel and has had, for him, an inordinate amount to drink, if only beer. He hasn't eaten since breakfast that morning on the train; he supposes he'll eat again in the morning on the train, returning to Schenectady with his musician friends. (He dreads seeing them. Their eyes. Their embarra.s.sed smiles. At the Westheath School, none of his colleagues will speak to him of Esopus, the Lost Village except to a.s.sure Darian vaguely that his music is too difficult and unconventional for ordinary ears; none will speak to him of the critical notices that appeared in several New York papers, the kindest in the Tribune, beginning "A career other than musical composition is urgently advised for the youthful, earnest but painfully talentless Schenectady resident Darian Licht . . . ." Nor will Darian make any inquiries.) The loud rap is repeated, and Darian opens the door, and sees-who is it?-a couple in evening attire, so handsomely glittering they might have stepped out of the society pages of the Sunday rotogravure.

"Darian? Darian Licht? Is it you?"

"No. Yes. I'm not sure. Who are you?"

"You don't recognize me, son? Of course you do."

A silvery-haired gentleman in his early sixties, it seems; in black tie, and carrying a silk top hat; a much younger woman at his side, in an ankle-length deep-purple velvet gown, staring at him with dark shining eyes he'll recall afterward as too intense. Who are these strangers? Well-wishers? Musical connoisseurs? In the very wake of defeat and humiliation Darian Licht is vain enough, or naive enough, to believe that, yes, someone took notice that evening of his genius.

The silvery-haired gentleman steps forward into the room, uninvited. His gloved hand extended. His smile somewhat forced, yet confident. "Of course you recognize me, son. Even after so many years. And here is my wife Rosamund . . . ."

Darian is deafened by a roaring in his ears like Niagara Falls. As in a distorting mirror he sees a familiar-unfamiliar face leering at him, and the mouth moving soundlessly. And the woman's face, no one he has ever glimpsed before, a hard chiseled beauty he seems nonetheless to recognize. "Father . . . ?" he manages to say. "Is it . . . ?"

Abraham Licht, hardly changed. Or if changed, in the shock of the moment Darian Licht hasn't the capacity to see.

"We're aggrieved, Rosamund and I, to have missed your concert," Abraham Licht is saying, "-but we were held up at an impossibly long, dull c.o.c.ktail reception at the Astors' over on Fifth Avenue-the usual thing at that house, I've been told; my error, for which I'm deeply apologetic and chagrined, and hope you'll forgive me. Son!" In Darian's hotel room which is scarcely larger than an old-fashioned claw-footed bathtub, the elegantly dressed smooth-shaven Abraham Licht and his new wife take up so much s.p.a.ce, Darian is forced back against the iron bedstead, panting. A few hours previously there was Thurston; and now Father; is he on the verge of death, and his life flashing before his stunned eyes? He has all he can do to keep his balance. The new Mrs. Licht reaches out to steady him with a gloved hand and he shrinks, cat-like, from her touch.

A woman no older than Darian. With greeny-glistening eyes. Her fine wavy black hair, just perceptibly streaked with gray, brushed back from her angular face and fashioned into a sleek French twist. There's a charming little k.n.o.b near the bridge of her nose and her lips are perfectly sculpted, darkened to crimson. Maybe Darian imagines it but isn't there, in the new Mrs. Licht's face, an expression of . . . startled recognition?

How could you do it, marry this man! You, so young and so beautiful, to marry a man old enough to be your father!

And her green eyes flash defiantly Because I love him. Because he loves me. What right have you to judge us?

Darian hears himself stammering words he won't recall afterward, a fumbling faltering performance. It's like the aleatory moments in Esopus that so baffled and outraged the audience. Abraham Licht cuts Darian off, aggressively praising him though he didn't attend the recital and hasn't heard any music of Darian's in more than a decade, presenting him to the new Mrs. Licht as a "musical genius of a son"-a "musical prodigy"-a "will-o'-the-wisp" whose whereabouts are often unknown even to his family. Darian protests laughingly, "Father? What family?" but Abraham Licht takes no notice; nor does Rosamund seem to hear; as in a performance of a play in which not all the actors are equally familiar with the script or equally well rehea.r.s.ed, Darian is confusedly aware that something is happening of which he hasn't any control yet can't resist; must not resist; there's a momentum of what might be called audience expectation . . . a sense that, beyond the blinding footlights, in a vast, undefined s.p.a.ce beyond this room in the Empire State Hotel, a gathering of witnesses is waiting. With a part of his mind Darian would like to open the door and shove the beaming Abraham Licht out into the hall, with the new Mrs. Licht; yet he stands paralyzed, staring and smiling at his visitors like a fool. Abraham Licht is saying, in a voice of fond reproach, "You might, y'know, son, have notified your own father about your premiere. Here in Manhattan, at Carnegie Hall! Only imagine-a child of mine, making his debut at Carnegie Hall! And yet I knew nothing of it until yesterday; it was my darling Rosamund who happened to see the item in the paper. Our name-'Licht.'"

Darian manages to protest, mildly, "But-how would I have known you were here? We've been out of touch for-"

"No, no," Abraham Licht says quickly, with a look of alarm, "-we must put the past behind us. Where is your coat, son? Here? This?" Abraham has taken up the formal jacket with its silly split tail which Darian wore as conductor, and which Darian had tossed onto the floor. "Something less formal, I should think, would be appropriate for the hour. Ah, here-this will do better." Abraham has discovered another jacket, which Rosamund takes from him and brushes, for it's dirty from the floor; it seems that Abraham Licht and his new young wife are going to take Darian out on the town to celebrate the world premiere of Esopus, the Lost Village-Abraham has made reservations at the Pierre, a short carriage ride away up on Fifth Avenue by the Park. "But, Father, I'm drunk; I'm exhausted, humiliated, broken-I want only to sink into sleep and into oblivion-please!" Darian protests laughingly but again no one listens. There's no elevator in the Empire State Hotel so Abraham Licht, Rosamund and Darian descend the stairs, several flights of poorly lit, gritty stairs, Darian finds himself gripped by the arms, protected from slipping and falling, there's much laughter, good-natured jesting, for both Abraham Licht and his beautiful young wife have been drinking this evening, though a.s.suredly they're not drunk, such glamorous demiG.o.ds never get drunk, it's poor Darian Licht visiting Manhattan from Schenectady, New York, a visiting instructor at the Westheath School of Music who's likely to get drunk, yet in the open air Darian revives, or almost, managing after two attempts to climb up into the horse-drawn carriage, the driver in tails and top hat grinning at this handsome trio of revelers, he's hoping for a generous tip, the elder gentleman in evening attire looks well-to-do and magnanimous, crying, "To the Pierre, my man! Posthaste!" in a commanding baritone voice.

The jostling carriage ride causes Darian's head to rattle as if pebbles are being shaken inside it. He begins to cry-tears are streaking his face. Where am I being taken, who are these people, Father why did you forsake me for so long! But it's Rosamund who slips her fingers through his, her gloved fingers through his, to steady and comfort. Darian is seated between the new Mrs. Licht and Father, squeezed upright between them, the ride is jolting, hilarious, the driver wields his whip, the dapple-skinned horse whinnies with excitement, or with pain, as he's whipped, careening along Eighth Avenue north toward Central Park.

HOW TO RESIST, you cannot.

After more than a decade's estrangement Darian and his father are reconciled. Late next morning when Darian wakes from his comalike sleep, having missed the train to Schenectady, he'll be unable to recall why he'd ever vowed not to be Abraham Licht's son.

"The island is finite, its promise infinite."

Abraham Licht confides this wisdom to his youngest son Darian who's so unworldly, he'd been drinking the "Manhattan" his father had prepared for him as if it were merely beer, to be swallowed quickly down. Even Rosamund laughs at him, with sisterly mock-censure. "Oh, Darian! Do go more slowly."

Since being taken up by Father and Father's new young wife, Darian Licht has been, you might say, careening . . . wild crashing chords up and down the keyboard, hands crossed over so the left is pounding the treble and the right, the ba.s.s. Am I in love? Or just drunk?