Before Page 8
She lowers the camera to her chest and makes her way to a corner booth, the floor sticky here, leans against the table. The group in the booth, three guys, two girls, college age, glance up and nod and smile, drunk already, and Tika nods and apologizes, though she knows they cannot hear her. She unclips the wide-angle lens and takes from her jacket a leather cylinder, a Leitz Tel 4 T, 200 mm, and fits and clips it into the Leica. She puts the lens cap onto the wide angle and slips the lens into the cylinder and nods to the group again—one of the boys tries to say something to her, looking at her as if he remembers her, to extend a hand, but Tika acts as if she doesn’t notice and walks forward to a gray-washed pole. She braces herself against it, and through the Leica, bright and close, Eric Sheff on the raised Tama drum set whacks the skins with controlled, rhythmic fury. Eric wears dark glasses and a black shirt, and his arms are fully tattooed; his mouth is slightly open. Tika catches now, on his wrist, rising and falling in rhythm, the cloth skull-and-crossbones bracelet he wears on his right arm. He is a very sweet, studied guy, finishing a degree at the New England Conservatory. He is a madman on the drums—and the vibration of them goes through Tika’s bones.
Jesse swears his throat is always going to tear out on this song, he puts so much into it: Every note of every song of every performance, he always says, we’re gonna give it everything, because you never know who’s out there in the audience. Eric and Pug “Mozart” Hines and Kerig Scott, the lead guitarist, sing on the choruses now—Jesse screams, “Well now give me money!” and they sing, “That’s what I want!” Jesse screams, “I wanna be free!” and the whole band sings, “That’s what I want!” Elijah’s long brown hair is swept behind him, his Rickenbacker muscling out the chords, and beside him Pug pounds the Yamaha keys, wearing a dark long-sleeved Superman shirt, his teeth showing in his perpetual grin, his own glasses flashing under stage lights; the notes of the Yamaha harmonize with Kerig’s distorted lead guitar.
Tika moves in closer as the song hits a crescendo, the lights now an intense white, then yellow, then blue. She braces her legs and watches through the camera her Jesse. Fists are in the air before him, and many naked female arms reach for his shins. Fine, she thinks. He’s good-looking, my Jesse, with his wonderful wide shoulders, his long throat—that will sell CDs. Jesse looks over as Pug pounds into a last solo, and Jesse’s beautiful vein runs up his forearm, and sweat is shining on his jaw. Tika shoots four and she is done and walking through the forest of bodies, a tight path smelling of whiskey and marijuana and perfume. She nods to the large security guard, Neil—a man nearly as wide as this battered door—and steps into the back hallway, toward the dressing room, forty-watt bulbs just lighting her way.
In the small dressing room the music is just slightly more subdued: Jesse’s bass and Eric’s bass drum still thump solidly through the cement-block wall. She sits on the old couch, picks up Jesse’s beaten leather coat (Harley-Davidson Motor Cycles, says the emblem on the back of the jacket, Established 1903, Milwaukee, WI), and smoothes it onto her lap. She smells now of smoke and alcohol, smells this even on the back of her hand, her white rope bracelet, and she loves it, this smoke-filled rock-and-roll world of her boyfriend; she sets the camera, her leather case, beside her. She listens to the end of the song, four whacks of the drums, the band together on the final, sustained note, the applause and whistling like wind. On the wall, in frames, Batman and Robin race to the gleaming Batmobile, the intricate Batcave with its computers all around them. In another still, Adam West stands at Wayne Manor, at a party, wearing trim slacks, a collegiate sweater, holding a glass of wine; above that, Batman strikes hard at a thug, a sweep of fist, with the cartoon caption Pow! across the top of the picture.
A tuxedo hangs on the bathroom shower stall: Pug will change into it after showering, and play a late night gig at a private party—Gershwin and Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. Kerig Scott has invited the rest of them to meet his new girlfriend at the Club Isis in Copley Place—there is an official opening party going on all week, and the place will be open until four. Eric said he was sorry, he already had a date himself, and Jesse whispered to Tika, We probably should, and Tika nodded enthusiastically. Some of her friends at Emerson and at Standish’s Pub have been buzzing about the new club. It is anybody’s guess if Elijah will go, as screwed up as he is over a relationship he lost in July; he’s not much for hanging out lately.
She drops in the Kodak roll, leads it onto the sprockets, closes the back of the Leica and turns the thumb lever, spooling the film in; she faintly hears Jesse’s voice joking with the crowd, and many voices yelling and hands clapping. Eric hits a couple of notes. The song they are about to do is the one Tika has brought to all the college radio stations. Monkey’s Fist will make it, Tika is sure of it: sure that they are on the verge of something big. She has watched her Jesse working, night after night, spread out on the worn Oriental rug of his Jamaica Plain apartment, papers—songs in the making—all around him, his Gibson plugged into the Roland digital recorder that he has borrowed from the music store. Tika helps where she can: She has taken the photographs of the group that have been in the Boston Phoenix and The Noise and Stuff at Night and that get plastered to lampposts throughout Cambridge and Boston, next to flyers for all the other current groups, Mistle Thrust and Doctor Frog and Dragstrip Courage and Eve Was Framed. Tika changes guitar strings, sometimes runs the Roland for Jesse when he wants to put down a final version of a song. A few days ago she helped him replace the S-pipe on the 1994 Chevy van that the group owns, crawling under with him and holding up the pipe while he soldered. They were in the garage the band rents, motorcycles and instrument boxes all around them, everything lit by hanging lightbulbs, an Elvis license plate nailed to the inside of the door. Jesse had said, Honey you’re doing too much, you shouldn’t be doing all of this, but secretly Tika knows that he loves having her there by his side, that she is not the kind of girl who is afraid of anything, of any work.
Three months ago Kascha was on The Late Show with David Letterman; maybe she’ll know someone there who can help launch Monkey’s Fist when they get the CD out. And there are all the parties Kascha goes to, all the producers she rubs elbows with. Kascha has already said she wants to help, that there are two producers in Los Angeles she thinks would be interested, and Tika has asked her sister to start looking into it. But Tika won’t say anything to Jesse unless she gets some solid leads—she knows from Kascha that few show business people deliver what they promise.
She finishes winding in the film, slips the camera case over her shoulder, and steps into the hallway again, down to the stage door. The overhead bulbs emit an ethereal light; just a little while ago, when the band went on at nine, Tika kissed Jesse in the hallway here and wished him luck, then kissed his throat and held him close, and the others passed by, joking that someone should get a room, and Jesse, grinning, went through the door with them and she heard the audience in rousing applause as the band strapped on their instruments in the darkness.
She goes through the same stage door now, stepping through the shadows, wires on the floor, guitar cases, beaten-up equipment cases with block stenciling, Monkey’s Fist and Pug Mozart, here behind this drawn curtain. She steps to the small slip of opening in the heavy velour and here is the band in profile; Eric hits a time on the sticks, and then the others are with him, and the lights intensify, tracers following the shoulders of Jesse and Elijah, blue, yellow, and red, Eric’s head above in a halo, and Tika can see Pug’s face, anticipating, looking up at Eric, as they time the intro. The audience is applauding already, recognizing, whistling, and Jesse’s bass hits, and Elijah is singing.
I see you in the city street
Late one night where raindrops meet
In water lit by neon like a fire
Woman you are everywhere
And in this endless night we share
Your memory’s burnin’ through me like a wire
Elijah started writing the song after a late night walk th
is summer through Boston. Jesse had told Tika about Elijah’s breakup, the next night in bed on Trowbridge Street, just after helping Elijah finish the piece; the woman, twenty-nine years old to Elijah’s twenty-five, was upset with what she called Elijah’s nomadic, Bohemian life. Tika remembered her with Elijah at a party in Brookline, where Monkey’s Fist was being courted by a local producer (Jesse later decided the man was a con artist): Tika’d seen a tall, very good-looking woman, blond and with a burgundy silk cardigan and pants, a silk scarf about her neck, holding a wineglass and leaning against a besotted Elijah. The party had been filled with local rock-and-roll musicians and their girlfriends; there was a famous filmmaker there and a broadcaster who had gone from the local Boston market to national celebrity as a game-show host. It was one of those gatherings that was, to Tika’s mind, more about people trying to make you jealous, to make your own accomplishments pale next to their supposed greatness. Tika always felt uncomfortable around such egos. But Elijah’s lover had seemed in her element, and her eyes were full of play, and she had laughed with her long throat and Elijah had watched her all night. In bed, Tika told Jesse that there were some women who would like the image of what the guys were doing—who would enjoy seeing themselves in the midst of that image, for a while—at parties with the unconventional and famous, draped around a man like Elijah; those women, Tika said, wanted their men eventually in a box, and Jesse had nodded. Balls in a cage, he’d said. Apparently, the woman realized that Elijah was into music for the long haul—it wasn’t just some fashionable phase—and it wasn’t long after, on a weekend at some resort, that she dumped him. Elijah hadn’t been able to let loose of her, Jesse’d said. Sometimes, Jesse said, he drives up north to Newburyport where she lives and just freaking checks out who’s going in and out of her house. He even watches her go in and out of work. He’s sort of going nuts. We’re still trying to pull him out of it.
Elijah’s head is bowed now, his long brown hair falling forward, a few discernible faces of the audience around his figure. Tika wonders if he still thinks of the woman as he plays, of her place up there by the ocean and the way he’s stood there, watching her home from the protection of trees. There are always these ghosts, she thinks, imagining Jiri’s haunted face when she came to the door this evening. We’re always in orbit around a phantom something. Now Jesse goes forward to the microphone to sing on the chorus, all of these eyes watching him and Elijah together:
And the storm winds blow
They’re going right through me
’Cause baby I’m a ghost
Of the man I used to be
Tika watches the circle of audience eyes: thinks of Elijah and the woman he still loves. Then of a winter day at the Museum of Fine Arts last year—snow on the eaves of the wonderful old buildings and fog in the streets and going in with Jesse to see John Lennon’s guitar. The old Rickenbacker behind glass, a circle of people staring in awe, thinking of the Beatles and history, each lost in some memory of their own. In orbit around a phantom something.
She removes the telephoto lens and puts it in her case; she reaches in and comes up with a Spiratone fish-eye lens that she snaps quickly onto the Leica, and steps toward the back of the stage, so that she has all of the members of the band in the shot: Eric warped toward the ceiling, lights raining. The circle of shining, audience eyes. The song closes and the thunder of applause goes up and Tika begins shooting, capturing this ring of human light.
SEVEN
Jiri dreams that he is in some old colonial home. It is morning and there is a restful forest surrounding the house and Jesse and Tika have quietly been talking and they apologize for waking him up. Not at all, Jiri says; the sun stretches golden over the old wooden walls and immediately he is engaged in a discussion and Lord! how he can talk. He tells them about southern Bavaria and sailing on Bodensee and how the countryside around Immenstadt is emerald green in the spring sun. How one fall he swam completely across Lake Tergensee and how very cold and refreshing it was; that was 1951, and he and Anna had been married almost three years. They skied high in the Alps, at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and took the train back to Munich. He’d put in many intense hours on the job that winter, for all of the intelligence services were trying to catch up with a character they called Duch, the Demon-spirit, an East German SSD assassin who was killing exiled Czech and Hungarian leaders with the use of a hydrogen-cyanide gun. The Duch was never found.
I never found my mother and sister, he tells his young friends, and the world forgot about Czechoslovakia. In the films that came out of his old country he saw how decrepit, how gray and worn the buildings and cobblestoned streets were. The faces of his countrymen seemed without hope. There was the brief sunshine, the possibility, of Dubek. Then in 1969, after the Soviets rolled into Prague, he and Anna decided to leave Europe. I couldn’t watch things disappear anymore, he says.
In this old, sunlit-filled home Tika and Jesse look at him with great respect, and Jiri knows they are amazed, as he is, at how he can talk: it is as if he is lifting off the ground, beginning to fly. There is so much that he has wanted to talk with Tika about! And now as he thinks of it, he realizes he shall soon be able to work again for the Guild—to take the train to the business district, and the buildings of blue glass will be above him, and he will be free again, walking with his briefcase as he did last March, when he last went there on the T, snow melting, sunshine in the city, the breath of cool air.
And then he is awake, in the darkness beside his wife, and he can think with the same old speed, but he knows he would not be able to bring his thoughts fluidly to his lips. For a moment he feels he might choke with the sadness of it, of what he has lost in the moment from sleep to waking. He snaps the covers away from himself, thinks: So. I’ll heal this somehow, damn it.
Marjorie Legnini told him early, after he lost the speech, that the writing gives him greater access to his thoughts, that whatever the path is between the brain and the mouth is eased with the writing process. The doctors don’t quite know why this is, she said, but she had seen it work many times. So. He rises and puts on his flannel, threadbare robe over a T-shirt; he gets into khakis, slippers. He takes his cane. Anna sighs, hardly conscious, irritated at her husband’s nightly restlessness. He can walk ceaselessly at night these days—through the flat, or to check the Buick for fluids, or up and down the sidewalk before their building. Jiri goes into the library and turns on the light and sits on the ottoman, the window in the nook before him slightly opened to screens. He picks up the memory book, unclips a pen from its cover. The glass is a glossy black stretch, and his fingers are reflected there, turning the pages, the leaves above a collection of dark pressing shapes.
The swastika across the room is less prominent in the light. No hovering now, just a flat symbol on the spine of an old book. Jiri watches it, feels the early fall air circulating from the opened windows of the apartment. Then he begins to write. It is a sound of laughter that he focuses on—a young woman’s laughter—a tourist, perhaps, in this late afternoon. He is in Linz, a few years ago, with Anna, on a stopover to Prague. It is winter. The yellow, red, and white medieval houses surround them, a frosting of snow on the red-tiled roofs. Niches in the walls parade intricately carved angels and saints, balconies that in summer will weep with flowers and plants. The windows of the baroque shops are frosted with snow and ice hangs from the archways and it is cold, some wind blowing, snow drifting sometimes through the street horizontally. A few people walk about, their footsteps and voices echoing in the strange winter silence. Jiri hears the woman’s laughter, and he thinks of a similar sound, ninety-five years before. The anguished boy standing in this very place, understanding that Stefanie cannot be his. Jiri feels he is walking in a graveyard of millions.
He and Anna come to an old dance hall. There are wide steps of marble up from the street, massive balustrades adorned at the entrance by carved lions. The place is being refurbished now to house a business, but Jiri imagines Adolf Hitler walking up the
se wide steps to one of the large windows. The young Hitler staring in at the dancers: men in uniform, women in wide, sweeping dresses. Faces in there of joy; light from the chandeliers intensely warm on the floorboards. And there, in the arms of a lieutenant—one of those who offered her a flower on the Promenade—dances the extraordinary girl Stefanie. She has a white-gloved hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder. Adolf Hitler stands at the window, watching, annihilated.
* * *
Jiri is writing in Czech now, remembering words that President Havel wrote and that Jiri translated, sitting in this same chair, ten years before. Zloinci zůstali na svobodĕ a volnĕ se pohybovali mezi námi pedstírali e jsou estní lidé dvacátého. Století, kteí nevĕí ve zloiny. The demons have been turned loose and go about … confronting this modern world with machine guns in their hands, they believe themselves to be instruments of providence: after all, they are merely meting out punishment in accordance with the ancient prophecy about the desecrator of their Golden Temple.
Hitler at the window plans his punishments for the world. Even fate will bend to his wishes! He can trust in his own will, if nothing else. There is relief in this. Wind dashes a spray of snow all around him. He can hear the laughter, the grand music through the glass, but in this moment, filled with his plans, he can convince himself he is above such things.
* * *
Now a car rushes by quickly on Trowbridge Street, a white hiss through fallen leaves. Jiri sees the motion behind his reflection, his fingers tight with the pen. He writes the word annihilation, thinks of how Adolf Hitler murdered everything he, Jiri, loved. There was a girl named Alena during the war (or this was how Jiri knew her—you never knew the true name of anyone in your Resistance group, so that if captured by the Gestapo you would not betray the others). She was a long-limbed, older Czech girl who took his virginity one night not long after he joined Kobera’s Resistance cell. He thinks of Alena now and how her face looked above him in the night; he was fifteen. They were in the loft of a safe house, a stable in Veltrusy, and stars were bright beyond the dark of her, through the opened loft hatch; she too had lost her family to the Nazis. She’d dug her hands into his chest and pressed herself onto him, and her lips went to his ear. He’d swooned at how fierce and insistent a woman’s body could be, nature could be: He’d been indoctrinated into this new world.