Read Online Very Far Away from Anywhere Else by Ursula K. Le Guin - Free Book Online

know, and this was really a foreign city I had never seen before, and I only thought I'd lived here all my life because I was going crazy.

    I looked at things, the trees, the houses, the way a tourist would, and it really seemed to be true, I'd never seen them before. The wind kept blowing in my face.
    When I got to the church and other people were going in, I felt very nervous and irritable. I sort of crept in. I would have gone on all fours if I could have, so as to be less visible. It was a big old church, mostly wood, hollow and dark and high inside. Since I'd never been in it, it was easy to keep up the feeling of being a total stranger, a foreigner. There were quite a lot of people there and more coming in, but I didn't know any of them. I didn't know where Natalie would sit, probably down in front; so I took a seat at the end of a pew in the last row, clear across the church from where the people came in, behind a pillar, as inconspicuous a place as I could find. I didn't want to see or be seen. I wanted to be alone. The only people I saw that I knew even by sight were two girls from school, maybe friends of Natalie's. The church got quite full, but being in a church nobody talked loud, and the sound of them talking was like water on the beach, a big soft noise, not English, not anything. I sat there reading the mimeographed program and feeling dizzy and unearthly—detached, completely detached.

    The songs were the next to last thing on the program. The orchestra was pretty good, I guess; I didn't listen hard, I kept floating; but I sort of vaguely enjoyed the music, because it let me float. There was an intermission, but I stayed in my seat. Then finally the singer stood up, down in front. The accompaniment was a string quartet, and Natalie was playing the viola part. I hadn't expected that. I saw her sitting there next to a big middle-aged man cellist; he hid most of her, I could just see her hair looking sleek and jet black in the lights. Then I ducked down again. The conductor, who was the chatty type, went on for a while about Music in Our City and about this promising young musician and composer of eighteen, and finally shut up and the music began.

    The singer was good. She was just somebody who sang at the church, I guess, but she had a strong voice, and she understood the words and the music. The first song was "Love and Friendship," a simple poem about how love is like the wild rose but friendship is the holly tree. It had a good tune, and you could tell the audience thought it was very pretty. They applauded hard at the end Natalie sat there and scowled and didn't look up. They weren't supposed to applaud until all three songs were sung. The singer looked embarrassed and half bowed, and the audience finally got the idea and shut up. Then she sang the second one. Emily Brontë wrote the words when she was twenty-two.

Riches I kid in light esteem

And Love I laugh to scorn

And lust of Fame was hut a dream

That vanished with the morn—
    And if I pray, the only prayer

That moves my lips for me

Is— "Leave the heart that now I bear

And give me liberty
"
    Yes, as my swift days near their goal

'Tis all that I implore—

Through life and death, a chainless soul

With courage to endure!
    The violins and the cello played long notes softly in a kind of shivering drone, and there was a double tune, the singer and the viola, singing with and against each other. A hard, reaching, grieving tune. And it broke through, on those last four words and stopped.

    The audience didn't applaud. Maybe they didn't know it was over, maybe they didn't like it, maybe it scared them. The whole place was perfectly silent. Then they did the third song, "Mild the mist upon the hill," very softly. I began crying, and I couldn't stop when it was over and they were clapping and Natalie had to stand up and take bows. I got up and blundered around the back of the pews, by feel mostly because I couldn't see for crying,