Read Online In Sunlight and in Shadow by Mark Helprin - Free Book Online
Authors: Mark Helprin
Ads: Link
it?”
“You’ll see, someday. What about you?”
“I see Central Park as if from the bridge of a ship, a hundred and ten feet up—which is high enough to remove you from the noise of the street but low enough to keep the expanse of the park immense and the leaves visible one by one. Because it’s dusk I can see the lights glowing in the mass of buildings on Fifth Avenue.”
Her heart beat fast as she waited for what would come. As he looked out at the cliffs, now shining, and she at swift ships backlighted by the newly risen moon, Harry Copeland said to Catherine Thomas Hale, through the copper lines that tied together with electric current every cell in the body of Manhattan, the words—which though simple were excitingly charged with many meanings—“May I see you?”
5. Catherine’s Song
H ER INSTRUCTION WAS that as the music came up she was supposed to take a breath, the kind of breath, as if in shock, that signals great emotion. It had to come just before the percussionist sounded the automobile horn, which elided into a trolley bell, which then became a torrent of music that transformed the dark theater into the streets of Manhattan in a blaze of light.
“Can you do this?” the director asked. “Think of yourself as, remember, the girl from Red Lion, Pennsylvania, or somewhere, somewhere where they have chickens. You step out of the station, and there all at once is the city. You’ve never seen anything like it. It’s overwhelming. It takes your breath away. That’s what we want.”
“They have chickens in New York, Sidney,” she said.
“Live ones?”
“Yes.”
“Not in the restaurants where I eat. I’m asking, can you do it?”
“I can do it,” she said, “but I’ll have to practice.”
“Practice taking in a breath?”
“If you want me to express what you want me to express. . . .” She paused, and looked up at the darkness beyond the blinding spotlights that pinned her onstage. She waved her hand in a questioning spiral. “The whole city. If you want me to convey the life of the city, on this stage, in a single breath—I mean, really—you’ll have to have a little patience.”
“The music has something to do with it too, dear,” the director told her condescendingly. She was the youngest member of the cast, and it was her first part.
But, with one great exception, which she had not overcome, it was both easy for her and in her blood to hold firm. “The music, Sidney, has more than just a quarter of a second with which to work.”
He relented. “All right, everyone take a break so she can practice breathing. At Bryn Mawr, didn’t they teach you to breathe?”
“That’s not what they do at Bryn Mawr. It’s a college. You learn to breathe way before that.
Capisce?
I need fifteen minutes.” This was just the beginning of her song, as hard as it was, and the song itself, arrestingly beautiful, would have to follow with just the right tone, the right pacing, and the right gloss.
She hurried backstage to stairs that rose to the grid, and as she ascended she realized that, never having been there, she didn’t know if she could reach the roof this way. Even if she could, the view might be blocked, and even were it not, would she find enough in what she would see, because in Manhattan after the war the great and the heroic had given way to tranquility and rest. She drifted up through the darkness, unsure. The higher she climbed, the more the activity below, seen through a black matrix of ropes, bars, wires, and flats, seemed like a miniature of the city itself. Lighting technicians brought up crazily timed sunsets and sunrises in orange and gold, and replicated the terra-cotta-colored rays that in late afternoon make the high façades of city blocks into cathedrals of light. The people moving in the wash of the kliegs seemed to flutter like masses of wings, and in the flare of tungsten fair hair looked like the gold that sparkles in sunlit rock.
At the top of the
“You’ll see, someday. What about you?”
“I see Central Park as if from the bridge of a ship, a hundred and ten feet up—which is high enough to remove you from the noise of the street but low enough to keep the expanse of the park immense and the leaves visible one by one. Because it’s dusk I can see the lights glowing in the mass of buildings on Fifth Avenue.”
Her heart beat fast as she waited for what would come. As he looked out at the cliffs, now shining, and she at swift ships backlighted by the newly risen moon, Harry Copeland said to Catherine Thomas Hale, through the copper lines that tied together with electric current every cell in the body of Manhattan, the words—which though simple were excitingly charged with many meanings—“May I see you?”
5. Catherine’s Song
H ER INSTRUCTION WAS that as the music came up she was supposed to take a breath, the kind of breath, as if in shock, that signals great emotion. It had to come just before the percussionist sounded the automobile horn, which elided into a trolley bell, which then became a torrent of music that transformed the dark theater into the streets of Manhattan in a blaze of light.
“Can you do this?” the director asked. “Think of yourself as, remember, the girl from Red Lion, Pennsylvania, or somewhere, somewhere where they have chickens. You step out of the station, and there all at once is the city. You’ve never seen anything like it. It’s overwhelming. It takes your breath away. That’s what we want.”
“They have chickens in New York, Sidney,” she said.
“Live ones?”
“Yes.”
“Not in the restaurants where I eat. I’m asking, can you do it?”
“I can do it,” she said, “but I’ll have to practice.”
“Practice taking in a breath?”
“If you want me to express what you want me to express. . . .” She paused, and looked up at the darkness beyond the blinding spotlights that pinned her onstage. She waved her hand in a questioning spiral. “The whole city. If you want me to convey the life of the city, on this stage, in a single breath—I mean, really—you’ll have to have a little patience.”
“The music has something to do with it too, dear,” the director told her condescendingly. She was the youngest member of the cast, and it was her first part.
But, with one great exception, which she had not overcome, it was both easy for her and in her blood to hold firm. “The music, Sidney, has more than just a quarter of a second with which to work.”
He relented. “All right, everyone take a break so she can practice breathing. At Bryn Mawr, didn’t they teach you to breathe?”
“That’s not what they do at Bryn Mawr. It’s a college. You learn to breathe way before that.
Capisce?
I need fifteen minutes.” This was just the beginning of her song, as hard as it was, and the song itself, arrestingly beautiful, would have to follow with just the right tone, the right pacing, and the right gloss.
She hurried backstage to stairs that rose to the grid, and as she ascended she realized that, never having been there, she didn’t know if she could reach the roof this way. Even if she could, the view might be blocked, and even were it not, would she find enough in what she would see, because in Manhattan after the war the great and the heroic had given way to tranquility and rest. She drifted up through the darkness, unsure. The higher she climbed, the more the activity below, seen through a black matrix of ropes, bars, wires, and flats, seemed like a miniature of the city itself. Lighting technicians brought up crazily timed sunsets and sunrises in orange and gold, and replicated the terra-cotta-colored rays that in late afternoon make the high façades of city blocks into cathedrals of light. The people moving in the wash of the kliegs seemed to flutter like masses of wings, and in the flare of tungsten fair hair looked like the gold that sparkles in sunlit rock.
At the top of the
Similar Books
