Read Online A Dove of the East by Mark Helprin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mark Helprin
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that he would be thrust into the heart of Paris in a piping time of peace, peace, said the uncle a veteran of four years of solid war, peace, God bless it.
He set up in a small apartment overlooking the Champ de Mars and on the first day of autumn when the returning population was in full frenzy, in a copper-colored bar where he stopped early in the morning to drink chocolate and eat pieces of buttered bread which he paid for as he took them one by one off a round plate, as the streets were washed down and men in blue coats streamed in and out, he looked across the room to a bank of sunny windows where the white dusty light was coming in on Shannon and made her look like an Irishwoman in a Sargent portrait.
Because she was so beautiful in her enlightened posture and expression, and because an intelligence radiated from her, he became very daring and approached the table, cup of chocolate in hand, a beautiful leather briefcase under one arm. He said,
âSprechen Sie Deutsch?âat
which she smiled and then laughed, because if they had been two Texas longhorns standing there in the corner of the cafe it could not have been more obvious that both were Americans; the fact was like water pouring over a dam. They went out and walked away hours. His daring began to extend itself for a yearâs tenure. He fell in love with her, having the peculiar feeling which new kisses can bring, an overwhelming sense of being alive in the face of the present. The world became an energetic frame. It was almost like being the leading man in an opera. Within a week she had moved two wicker trunks into his apartment. She did ballet exercises in the middle of the floor while they talked. She could not have told him that the first night when they walked up the Champs Elysees and basked in the lights and September fountains, a red-bearded Rumanian architect sat staring at her former bed and cursed himself in Hungarian, French, and English, and eventually threw a glass full of Scotch flat up against the wall.
And then she disappeared each morning and came back only after dark, having danced every day down to exhaustion. Harry was writing music, at which he was becoming masterful, in which he was beginning to be able to do anything he wanted. By terrifying bouts of sustained work he was forcing the creation of a great bed of experience, so that in the strong frame and healthy body of his twenties could be found an old man who had lived since the turn of the century, and whose wisdom at the craft astounded and amazed even competitors and the nearly deaf. He could write pieces as deep and blue as a fjord, echoing and quiet, and he could write as red as he pleased, American jazz born of a rich heartland and the death of the wilderness. And strangely, the better he got, the better he got, with no chance of slipping. This stood even Shannon in awe. Once he had said, I can do anything, absolutely anything. I am almost a master, and she had looked mean and tough and said, You can do
nothing,
leaving the room in a fit of envy which meant he could have her for at least another six months until their powers evened out again and she was able to glide and swirl naturally and gracefully beyond the ecstatic points to which his labor had taken him. But he was going farther, and they both knew it.
Winter passed. They had an enormous electricity bill, for the lights burned late at night, with Harry bearing down on his blinding white music pads and then touching the piano as if he were stroking a horse. Shannon danced and danced, slept from exhaustion, and danced again, becoming like Harry one of the ones who did not return in quiet and sadness to the starting point with a series of exquisite memories and some first editions. She danced at the National Theater. His pieces were really performed. Sometimes he conducted, in a light gray and blue tweed suit and his tortoise-shell glasses, and when he turned at the close and faced an approving audience, their feet
He set up in a small apartment overlooking the Champ de Mars and on the first day of autumn when the returning population was in full frenzy, in a copper-colored bar where he stopped early in the morning to drink chocolate and eat pieces of buttered bread which he paid for as he took them one by one off a round plate, as the streets were washed down and men in blue coats streamed in and out, he looked across the room to a bank of sunny windows where the white dusty light was coming in on Shannon and made her look like an Irishwoman in a Sargent portrait.
Because she was so beautiful in her enlightened posture and expression, and because an intelligence radiated from her, he became very daring and approached the table, cup of chocolate in hand, a beautiful leather briefcase under one arm. He said,
âSprechen Sie Deutsch?âat
which she smiled and then laughed, because if they had been two Texas longhorns standing there in the corner of the cafe it could not have been more obvious that both were Americans; the fact was like water pouring over a dam. They went out and walked away hours. His daring began to extend itself for a yearâs tenure. He fell in love with her, having the peculiar feeling which new kisses can bring, an overwhelming sense of being alive in the face of the present. The world became an energetic frame. It was almost like being the leading man in an opera. Within a week she had moved two wicker trunks into his apartment. She did ballet exercises in the middle of the floor while they talked. She could not have told him that the first night when they walked up the Champs Elysees and basked in the lights and September fountains, a red-bearded Rumanian architect sat staring at her former bed and cursed himself in Hungarian, French, and English, and eventually threw a glass full of Scotch flat up against the wall.
And then she disappeared each morning and came back only after dark, having danced every day down to exhaustion. Harry was writing music, at which he was becoming masterful, in which he was beginning to be able to do anything he wanted. By terrifying bouts of sustained work he was forcing the creation of a great bed of experience, so that in the strong frame and healthy body of his twenties could be found an old man who had lived since the turn of the century, and whose wisdom at the craft astounded and amazed even competitors and the nearly deaf. He could write pieces as deep and blue as a fjord, echoing and quiet, and he could write as red as he pleased, American jazz born of a rich heartland and the death of the wilderness. And strangely, the better he got, the better he got, with no chance of slipping. This stood even Shannon in awe. Once he had said, I can do anything, absolutely anything. I am almost a master, and she had looked mean and tough and said, You can do
nothing,
leaving the room in a fit of envy which meant he could have her for at least another six months until their powers evened out again and she was able to glide and swirl naturally and gracefully beyond the ecstatic points to which his labor had taken him. But he was going farther, and they both knew it.
Winter passed. They had an enormous electricity bill, for the lights burned late at night, with Harry bearing down on his blinding white music pads and then touching the piano as if he were stroking a horse. Shannon danced and danced, slept from exhaustion, and danced again, becoming like Harry one of the ones who did not return in quiet and sadness to the starting point with a series of exquisite memories and some first editions. She danced at the National Theater. His pieces were really performed. Sometimes he conducted, in a light gray and blue tweed suit and his tortoise-shell glasses, and when he turned at the close and faced an approving audience, their feet
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